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Olivia Munn recently opened up about how Kate Middleton indirectly supported her during her own cancer journey.
The 45-year-old actress spoke exclusively to PEOPLE while promoting season two of Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors.
During the conversation, Munn — who was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2023 — explained that many survivors continue to face ongoing challenges even after completing their initial treatment.
“I’ve been open about this, that with breast cancer, there’s so much medication afterwards for certain people,” she said.
“And for someone like me — and the type of breast cancer I had, and how aggressive it was, and for the age I am, and not having been premenopausal when I was diagnosed — there’s so many more medications I have to take. And there are a lot of side effects and they have been really hard on me,” she added.
Munn continued, “I guess I was hard on myself because I would ask other friends who were on the same treatment plan as me if they’d had any of my symptoms, and none of them did. Not one person said that they had exhaustion or mood swings or body aches. I thought, ‘I’m the only one getting this.’”
However, Munn said she recently heard the Princess of Wales, 44 — also a cancer survivor — share something that deeply resonated with her.
“Kate Middleton had talked about this recently, and she said it so succinctly [and] it really touched me and gave me such a sense of peace, because I finally had words behind it,” Munn said.
“She was like, ‘You think that the big things are the things you have to worry about,’ — I’m paraphrasing her — ‘But it’s the treatment after you’ve gone through the big things that’s really taxing and hard on you.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, somebody else is feeling that.’”
She added: “That’s where it feels really good … when you hear other people’s experiences, because it is true — you feel so much better when you know you’re not alone.”
Kate, who revealed her diagnosis in March 2024 and has since confirmed she is in remission, spoke openly about her experience during a visit to Colchester Hospital in July 2025.
“You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment. Treatment’s done, then it’s like, ‘I can crack on, get back to normal,’ but actually, the phase afterwards is really, really difficult,” the princess said.
She continued: “You have to find your new normal, and that takes time — and it’s a roller coaster, it’s not smooth, like you expect it to be. But the reality is you go through hard times.”
