Olivia Munn concocted an elaborate lie to keep John Mulaney from finding out she knew he was going to propose

Olivia Munn has a new understanding of criminals who get away with a crime only to confess decades later, following an incident involving husband John Mulaney and her best friend since childhood.

“Corinne, my best friend since I was 13 years old, she texted me,” Munn said Wednesday on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, “and she says, ‘Hey, are you alone?’ And immediately, I turned to John and say, ‘Oh my God. Corinne just asked if I’m alone. She wants to tell me something really interesting. I’m gonna go call her.’ So I immediately betray her by telling him that she wants to talk alone.”

Watch the full interview below, with the conversation about the lie beginning two minutes in.

Bad move, since Munn’s friend was telling her that the comedian had been asking about what she wanted in a proposal. Munn and Mulaney ultimately married in July 2024, after dating since 2021.

“I’m freaking out, though, cause I just told him that she called me and she wants to talk to me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, no. Now Corinne’s gonna get in trouble,'” Munn said. “But then also I can’t let Corinne know that I betrayed her trust immediately.”

She told that friend that she wanted to keep the big moment simple.

The Newsroom actress decided to tell Mulaney that her friend was having “really bad trouble” in her marriage. The problem was that the star of Netflix’s Everybody’s in L.A. had just seen the couple. He thought they were “doing great.”

So Munn doubled down on the made up story and said the couple hadn’t had six months. It seemed to work.

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But the tall tale wasn’t finished yet.

“After he proposes to me, he says to me, ‘hey, I want you to know, I know that whole thing about Corrine and her sex life and all that was a lie,'” Munn recounted.

Munn stuck to her fib. “I’m so embarrassed that I go ‘no, no, no, it is true.’ This is how I’m starting off my marriage.” She noticed that Mulaney now felt bad for the couple.

She broke afterward.

“Eventually, I just … the guilt just took over me, and I called Corinne, and I called John, and I was like, ‘You guys, I’m just so horrible, and I’m so sorry,'” Munn confessed. “It was too much.”

She and Mulaney survived. They welcomed their second child, daughter Méi June, via surrogate in September 2024. They had son Malcolm Hiệp in November 2021.