John Mulaney Honors Wife Olivia Munn With Touching Tribute After Her Breast Cancer Battle

Break out the tissues, Perezcious readers! You will need them because of this speech from John Mulaney about Olivia Munn!

On Thursday, the comedian showed up to InStyle’s 2024 Imagemaker Awards to present his wife with the Woman of Impact Award in recognition of her advocacy work around women’s health following her diagnosis with luminal B breast cancer in 2023. And he had some touching words to say about the actress! John said in the tribute:

“Olivia saving lives by speaking her truth is not surprising to me. Olivia is constantly trying to keep me out of danger and keep me alive through a series of texts throughout our entire relationship.”

The Saturday Night Live alum then proceeded to whip out his phone to read a message involving their 3-year-old son Malcolm. He shared:

“This was like the 200th time I took our son for a walk in a stroller in Chicago. She wrote me out of nowhere [with] no context, ‘Please be so careful today. So many crazy things can come out of nowhere.’ I texted back, ‘Like what?’ Olivia responded, ‘Crazy cars.’ You don’t hear enough about crazy cars!”

LOLz! The speech was not all jokes, though. Getting more serious, John went on to open up about Olivia’s difficult cancer battle:

“About a year [after her diagnosis], Olivia shared her story. Her cancer journey. This was a cancer that was not detected from a BRCA gene test, it was not detected by a mammogram. It was detected because she took a heretofore not-that-known test called the lifetime breast cancer risk assessment test and they found that she had a 37 percent chance of breast cancer. And about a month later, she was having a double mastectomy.”

As you can imagine, this was a scary time for the couple. However, Olivia still wanted to “help” those going through the same experience despite the difficult situation — and she did. John continued:

“She shared her story to help anyone she could. According to the National Cancer Institute, in the week after Olivia shared the story of her breast cancer journey, there was a 4,000 percent increase in women visiting the breast cancer risk assessment. That was the first week.”

Wow! That is amazing! Through all of it, John shared that they “learned a lot” like:

“We learned she would need five surgeries. We learned there was a risk of lymphedema. We learned that if we had not caught it when we caught it, things could have been a lot worse.”

So scary. And, of course, John had to get into another joke following the emotional parts! He quipped:

“I also learned it’s not pronounced ‘masectomy,’ it’s pronounced ‘mastectomy.’ It has a T in it. It shouldn’t. It should be ‘masectomy.’ It’s ironic that the word itself has a part that should be removed, I think.”

What a beautiful tribute from John! Watch a clip from the speech (below):

@instyle

Watch OliviaMunn’s tears roll from the moment her husband #JohnMulaney surprised her with the Woman of Impact Award at #InStyleImagemakers Awards Dinner. Hear more from the hilarious and touching speech at the link in bio.

♬ original sound – ShawnSebastien