Shared experiences can bring people closer, and Michael Strahan and Olivia Munn found comfort in understanding each other’s struggles.
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On Good Morning America, Munn shared how her mother was dealing with cancer around the same time that Strahan’s daughter, Isabella, had gone public with her cancer struggle. That overlap had the actress reaching out to the former NFLer, who had sobering advice.
“I just remember I said to Michael, I said, I just want to put it onto my cancer tab,” Olivia Munn said on Good Morning America. “Like, let me do it. I can do it. I don’t want her to go through this. I want to do it. And I feel so helpless. And you said something that was so impactful that it stayed with me every day of that journey. He said, ‘But you can’t. You can’t do it for them, but what you can do is be there for them.’
“And it was so simple. And I knew that you were doing it for your daughter. And I thought, if you can do it, then I can do it. And it just gave me a road map to get through it and be there for her. So, thank you.”
“Kind of made me cry,” Michael Strahan replied, listening to Olivia Munn emotional confession. “Kind of made me cry. It might make me cry here. And we have known each other. We have known each other for a long time.
Michael Strahan’s own experience with his daughter Isabella’s illness gave him the energy to support other families facing cancer. Isabella’s symptoms began in September 2023, when she noticed she was walking in a zigzag pattern instead of a straight line.
She initially thought it was vertigo, but she continued to feel sick and eventually started vomiting blood. Her twin sister, Sophia, urged her to go to the emergency room, while Michael also made sure she got medical attention. Doctors discovered a brain tumor and admitted her to a Los Angeles hospital for emergency surgery.
Isabella was still a teenager when she was diagnosed, a heartbreaking reality for any parent.
“One of my twins, Isabella, ended up with a brain tumor. And going in right before her freshman year at college,” Strahan said on The Drew Barrymore Show. “And all those commercials, one of the last things I would say was, ‘No parent should have to hear that their child has cancer.’ But it’s a different thing when you actually know what that parent has gone through.”
Over the following months, Isabella underwent treatment to fight the disease. She also shared her experience through YouTube videos, documenting the difficult stages of her treatment and recovery. In July 2024, she was declared cancer-free.
That experience pushed him to offer support to Olivia Munn in her tough time.
Olivia Munn was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. She encouraged her mother and sister to also get tested, which revealed that her mother had stage 1 breast cancer.
Munn explained on GMA that both she and her mother had clear mammograms and ultrasounds, but their high-risk assessment scores prompted doctors to recommend MRI scans, which helped detect their cancers.
Now, she is working to help other women going through this tough situation. Olivia Munn is working with Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona to introduce a bill in Congress in November. The bill is aimed at making the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool, or BCRAT, a part of general medical care for all female patients, per ABC. This tool helped catch the cancers in both Olivia Munn and her mother.