Quarantine hasn’t been all rainbows and butterflies and baking for actress Olivia Munn.
“Everyone is making banana bread, and living this amazing life and that’s not what I’m doing right now," she said. "I thought the point was for us to survive.”
Turns out, the two things helping her survive are the rescue dogs whose lives she saved: Frankie and Chance.
“The one common denominator with everyone that I know is quarantine has made a lot of people deal with depression and anxiety, and the other constant is their animals have always helped them through it,” Munn said.
Munn is known for playing a journalist on HBO’s "The Newsroom." You can see her now on Netflix's "Love Wedding Repeat."
Of the many ways she’s used her platform, animal welfare has become synonymous with Olivia Munn. She’s an ambassador for the Shelter Pet Project, with her face and her rescues plastered all over the country.
“I love seeing my pups on billboards in Times Square and when I drive down LA,” she said.
At the start of the pandemic, Munn teamed up with GreaterGood.org and Wag, the dog walking company she invested in and helped create, to start the #StayHomeandFoster initiative. Turns out, shelter pets have seen success far and wide, with shelters all over the country reporting an uptick in adoptions and fosters. But it’s what comes next that matters most to Munn. She hopes this is the start of a trend of people making adoption the only option. Olivia said her dogs helped her get through some of her own darkest times.
“He’s changed my entire life. Before I dealt with more depression and anxiety and OCD tendencies. Having this little animal that I had to take care of, be responsible for, and think about — any weird worries I had I was able to turn it into positive energy,” she said.
And maybe it took a pandemic for people to realize the importance of having a pet in their life, too.
“It’s helped me become more present. Our dogs are so present they’re in this moment that’s what they’re thinking about. That helped me calm down my own anxiety and stress,” she said.