Olivia Munn says the hardest part of moving back to Oklahoma at 16 was trying to start over at a new school, but one classmate ended up changing the rest of the story. That classmate was Jenny Marsden, the sister of James Marsden, and years later Munn and Marsden are now starring together in season 2 of Your Friends & Neighbors.
Munn, 45, said she returned to Oklahoma after growing up in Tokyo and had a rough time making friends. “I came back at 16 years old, the most difficult time to enter a new school. I had a really difficult time meeting friends,” she said, adding that Jenny Marsden was the girl who asked her to be friends and hang out. That small gesture took on a bigger meaning when Munn later learned Jenny’s brother was acting on a CBS show and, as she put it, she was “one degree away from meeting somebody who had made it.”
That old connection is now colliding with a new one on screen. Marsden joins season 2 of Your Friends & Neighbors as Owen Ashe, while Munn returns as Sam Levitt. The cast also includes Amanda Peet, Hoon Lee, Mark Tallman, Lena Hall, Aimee Carrero, Eunice Bae, Isabel Gravitt and Donovan Colan.
The two actors actually crossed paths long before this series. Both attended Putnam City North High School in Oklahoma City, where Marsden graduated in 1991 and Munn walked the stage in 1998. Marsden later became widely known for playing Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, in the original X-Men trilogy films in 2000, 2003 and 2006, while Munn played Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016.
Marsden said the reunion made immediate sense once he remembered Munn had known his sister. He recalled that she ran up to him at a GQ party in Los Angeles years later and told him she was friends with Jenny and had gone to Applebee’s with her back in the day. “Wait, what, I would have remembered you!” he said, describing the moment as funny and adding that now they are doing the show together.
Munn said she would tell her younger self to keep going through the discouraging stretch, because more would come than she could see at 16. She said a lot of dreams eventually came true and that even a small moment can stick with someone for life. In this case, the girl who asked a new student to hang out in Oklahoma ended up linking two careers, two school alumni and a shared credit in 2025’s season 2 of Your Friends & Neighbors.