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John Mulaney has a special friendship with girlfriend Olivia Munn’s mother, Kim Munn.
“Me and Olivia’s mom hang out all day and all night,” the comedian, 41, quipped during the Thursday, October 12, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “When we first had [our] baby, she came to stay with us for a while, along with Olivia’s stepdad and it was amazing [that] we became, like, instant friends.”
Mulaney and Kim, 68, soon started a nightly tradition of watching “one to two Korean period pieces” on TV. (Kim hails from Vietnam, but according to Mulaney, has an affinity for Korean foreign language films.) The pair eventually stumbled upon Park Chan-wook’s 2016 film The Handmaiden — and were caught off-guard by some of its racy content.
“I’m sitting with the wonderful Miss Kim, we are on the couch together, and we find this Korean film called The Handmaiden,” he recalled to host Stephen Colbert. “Set in the early 20th century, it’s about this book collector and this kept woman. We’re watching the film [and] It’s right up our alley: Korea, old-fashioned, perfect. It becomes, Stephen, the most graphic, sexual, erotic [movie]. I was truly like, ‘This is what people mean by erotic.’”
While Mulaney joked that he “can’t say” too much about the onscreen lesbian relationship because of CBS’ broadcast standards, he admitted it was particularly awkward to watch with his partner’s mother.
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“I look over [and] me and Miss Kim are under the same blanket, I realize,” Mulaney added. “And Olivia’s mom looks over at me and goes, ‘I think they [are] a little bit lesbian. What do you think?’”
Things got more uncomfortable when Mulaney and Kim reached the film’s “off-the-charts” oral sex scene.
“It’s so much that you have to look at each other,” he said. “So I just look over at her and she’s staring at me and she goes, ‘Hormone[s], everybody got ’em. What do you think?’”
Us Weekly confirmed Mulaney’s relationship with Olivia, now 43, in May 2021 following his split from ex-wife Anna Marie Tendler. They welcomed their first baby, son Malcolm, six months later.
Olivia, for her part, does not enjoy watching Korean movies with Mulaney and her mom. In fact, Mulaney told Colbert, 59, on Thursday that Olivia opted out after finding his comprehensive list of “Movies to Watch With Miss Kim.”
“She [said], ‘This is more effort than you put into any of our date nights,’” Mulaney joked.