Actress Olivia Munn hasn’t been in Hollywood all that long, but she’s already reached superstar status in at least one category: dishy stories about famous people. Check this one out about boxer Evander Holyfield:
Munn was 20 and had come to LA for an audition. She was walking around a local mall when Holyfield approached her outside Foot Locker and invited her to lunch. With nothing else to do, Munn accepted.
A few minutes later, she and the former champ were sitting in an Italian restaurant together. When Munn ordered the lasagna, Holyfield asked, “Is your mom fat? Does she have a big ass, big thighs?” When Munn said no, Holyfield allowed her the lasagna. “If your mom’s not fat, you’re not gonna be fat,” he reasoned.
But it wasn’t until the end of the meal that Holyfield really turned on the charm. Out of the blue (and, if we may say, with a woeful lack of foreplay), he asked Munn, “I got eight babies by eight different women. You wanna have my ninth?” She quickly KO’ed that idea.
“I was like, ‘This is really weird,’” Munn says. “But that’s my life. That kind of s – – t just happens.”
And it’s going to happen even more now that Munn has hit the big time. The half-Chinese 30-year-old, who grew up in Tokyo and Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma, recently landed a gig as a correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”
She’s so far shown up in two segments, reporting on the Russian spy scandal and the effect of the Gulf oil spill on fishermen. Comedy Central has characterized her stint as an audition, but Munn says Stewart told her she’s got the job. And she’s happy to be there.
“I get really excited about work and learning it all. My dressing room is next to [fellow correspondent] Aasif Mandvi’s,” Munn says. “Every day I’m like, ‘Hey, you want to go down and do a rehearsal?’ He’s like [dryly], ‘You’re still new, aren’t you?’”
But not everyone is as excited about Munn’s new gig. Best known for her appearances on “Attack of the Show,” a pop culture/video game news round-up on cable, Munn is also famous for posing in lads’ mags wearing bikinis and sexy Princess Leia costumes.
While this has earned her a huge following among comic-book nerds and sci-fi geeks, others are more dubious about her talents. Last month, blog site Jezebel published a story called “The Daily Show’s Woman Problem,” accusing the show of being a “boy’s club where women’s contributions are often ignored and dismissed.”
The article said Munn was “someone better known for suggestively putting things in her mouth on a video game show and being on the covers of Playboy and Maxim than for her comedic chops,” and suggested she got the gig based on her looks.
Munn calls the article a “slanted blog post from someone who can’t live in a world unless people are placed in aptly labeled boxes she’s become so accustomed to: i.e.. funny and smart, one box; sexy and stupid, another box; narrow-minded and hates women who are smart and pose in bikinis, another box.”
“The Daily Show” has since posted an open letter online from all its female employees rebutting the “boy’s club” claims. And last week, Slate writer Emily Gould published a response entitled “Outrage World,” which said for-profit blogs like Jezebel seek to generate page views with faux controversies like this one that are just “petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism.”
Controversy or no, Munn may have little time for “The Daily Show” shortly. Last week she released her breezy autobiography “Suck It, Wonder Woman! The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek” and will star in an upcoming NBC sitcom, “Perfect Couples,” in the fall.
“When I got offers for network shows this last pilot season, it was the first time I cried out of happiness,” Munn says. “I couldn’t believe it. I have five offers? A year and a half ago, I was dying for that one McDonald’s commercial. Now here I am having to turn down four shows.”
But Munn says that no matter how successful she gets, she won’t change the one thing she believes has brought her success: talking to geeks. She maintains a fan club, hosts online chats and often arranges meet-ups around the country.
She invited followers to see 2008’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” at a New York theater, and once played Red Rover with fans in a Texas park. She’s also promised to spend the day with whoever buys the 10,000th copy of her book.
“There’s a feeling of accessibility,” she says, “where it’s like watching a friend do well, as opposed to watching someone who’s unattainable.”
These days, she’s a bit more attainable. She split with her last boyfriend, “Star Trek” lead Chris Pine, in January and is currently single, choosing to focus on work.
“It’s hard,” she says of romance. “If I date someone and he happens to be in the public eye, in my regular life, it would just be ‘I’m dating that guy,’ but in Hollywood life, it’s ‘He’s my boyfriend.’ It’s like, ‘Wait. I don’t want to claim him as my boyfriend. We went on three dates.’ ”
Then again, if she ever gets lonely, she can always give Holyfield a call.
reed.tucker@nypost.com