In a 2018 interview, Olivia Munn described watching Brett Ratner gain power in Hollywood after he publicly admitted lying about having sex with her.
“He keeps getting bumped up higher and higher into these positions of authority and power,” she said.
Munn’s account dates to 2004, when she was an aspiring actress visiting the Santa Monica set of After the Sunset. She says she was asked to take food to Ratner’s trailer and assured he wouldn’t be there. She alleges that he appeared without pants, masturbated in front of her and ejaculated. Ratner denies the allegation.
Munn says she told the man who had sent her to the trailer, whose response she remembers as “Ugh, sorry about that.” She also called her sister, Sara Potts, who later confirmed that Munn had told her about the incident. A lawyer advised Munn against challenging a powerful director.
She described the incident in her 2010 book, Suck It, Wonder Woman!, without naming Ratner. In the 2018 interview, she explained that she had “disguised him for legal reasons.”
On November 3, 2011, Ratner publicly identified himself as the director she had written about during an appearance on Attack of the Show, which Munn had hosted. He denied her account and claimed, “I banged her a few times, but I forgot her.”
Four days later, he admitted on Howard Stern’s show that the sex claim was false: “I said I banged her three times, which wasn’t true.” That retraction concerned his claim that they had sex.
In 2013, RatPac-Dune, a venture involving Ratner’s company, secured a Warner Bros. financing agreement valued at about $450 million. Munn pointed to that deal when describing how his career continued to advance after the admission.
She says the false story about their sexual history was still following her in 2015. During a conversation about Empire, producer Brian Grazer asked whether she had dated Ratner and said he would “try” not to work with him, according to her account. Munn turned down the series.
In 2017, Ratner’s lawyer Martin Singer maintained that Ratner and Munn had had “an intimate relationship.” Munn called that “a complete lie.”
By the time of Munn’s 2018 interview, Warner Bros. had decided against renewing the deal following the November 2017 publication of allegations from Munn and 5 other women. The financing agreement ran through spring 2018.