Olivia Munn isn’t a fan of letting her children watch Ms. Rachel or most cartoons.
Olivia Munn won’t let her children watch cartoons.
The Your Friends and Neighbors actress – who has Malcolm, three, and Mei, eight months, with husband John Mulaney doesn’t find animated shows particularly “interesting” and she’s not a fan of kids’ YouTube favourite Ms. Rachel either.
She told People magazine: “I know kids love [Ms. Rachel], but the thing is, if I can’t watch it, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life going crazy. These kid shows drive me crazy.
“Malcolm asked for Blue’s Clues [recently], and I don’t know who showed him Blue’s Clues, but they are on my s*** list now.
“I said, ‘Hell no. Not in my house.’ John got him into the Spider-Man cartoons, which is not interesting to me.
“I put on Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Homecoming and was like, ‘If you want to watch the real-life ones, then we can watch that.’ It might be a little too old for him, but I can’t take the cartoons.”
However, Olivia, 44, made an exception for Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which she thinks is “great” and she and John, 42, found it helpful for Malcolm to watch the PBS cartoon ahead of the birth of Mei so he could prepare for being a big brother.
She said: “Daniel Tiger has a little sister, and we’d tell him, ‘There’s a baby sister coming.’ “
After Mei was born, the couple were careful not to “change [Malcolm’s] world and identity and responsibilities.”
Olivia explained: “A lot of times people will be like, ‘Oh, you’re a big brother now. You’re not the baby anymore. Now you can help mommy get the diapers.’ So, all of a sudden, he has all these responsibilities, and he doesn’t just get to be carefree anymore.
“Instead, we would say, ‘Now we have two babies. There’s baby Méi Méi and baby Malcolm.’
“He would say, ‘Mommy, come over here. Daddy, come over here,’ and if we were holding the baby, we would put her down so that he wouldn’t feel that all of a sudden now we can’t be there for him.
“It’s not that we were trying to teach him that everything he says goes, but we wanted him to have the transition with her to know that we’re still here whenever he needs us. Then, eventually when he’d say, ‘Put Méi Méi down,’ we’d say, ‘No, she wants to see her mommy too.’
“He smiles, and he understands.”
While she is only eight months old, Mei already shows she “loves her brother.”
Olivia said: “Anywhere he goes, she lights up. He’s teaching her how to talk. We have this great video of him telling her to say dada, and she says dada right back. It’s amazing and fun for him because he gets instant feedback and gratification from her doing the thing that he’s teaching her to do.
“I asked if he could teach her mama, but he said no.”
Olivia Munn doesn’t want her kids watching cartoons
