Kaitlin Olson has a knack for enjoying underestimated ladies.
On her long-running sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” she’s Dee, perpetually insulted by her friends and coworkers at Paddy’s Pub. She’s been Emmy nominated twice for her visitor activate “Hacks” as DJ Vance, the floundering grownup daughter of a self-involved comic. And now, on her new ABC sequence “High Potential,” she performs Morgan, a mom with a very excessive IQ who’s working as a cleansing woman when recruited by the LAPD for her crime-solving prowess.
Throughout our Zoom interview, I ask Olson about this recurring thread all through her work.
“If you ask my therapist,” she says with a giggle, “It is 100% because when I was very little, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be an actor,’ and everyone’s like, ‘so cute.’ ”
Her mother and father have been at all times supportive, however nobody else in Tigard, Ore., was. The scenario bought worse when she was in a motorcycle accident earlier than coming into seventh grade. She flipped over the handlebars and landed on her enamel. The restoration required facial reconstruction surgical procedure.
“I spent all of middle school and high school just feeling like I wanted to hide and nobody wanted to talk to me,” she remembers, earlier than correcting herself. “My perception was, ‘No one wants to talk to me.’ I’m sure their perception was, ‘I don’t know what to say to this poor mangled thing.’ ”
All through all of that she nonetheless wished to be an actor. Maybe that explains why she’s so good at inhabiting characters whom folks overlook at first.
Deniz Akdeniz, left, Daniel Sunjata, Kaitlin Olson and Judy Reyes in a scene from”Excessive Potential.” Within the present, Olson has to navigate a plot that includes homicide, household drama and humorous quips.
(Carlos Lopez-Calleja/Disney)
Morgan, nonetheless, is in a special mode than the same old Kaitlin Olson character. In any case, she’s within the middle of an hour-long crime procedural somewhat than a pure comedy, requiring Olson, who additionally produces, to navigate a plot that includes homicide, household drama and humorous quips. To this point, the combo has been a hit. Within the first half of its inaugural season, “High Potential” averaged 10.42 million viewers an evening and have become essentially the most watched new present on ABC in six years. Now, it returns for the second half of its first season on Tuesday
Filming the present has been what Olson describes as a “fun challenge.”
“It’s really hard to make the tone that we’re making because we’re combining a few different things, so once we all got on the same page about what that tone was, each different part of her life became easier for me to understand,” Olson says.
Drew Goddard, who developed the sequence off a French format, at all times knew Olson might faucet into all of the completely different sides of Morgan, concurrently making you chortle whereas breaking your coronary heart.
“You always feel her soul even when she’s making you laugh,” he says. “I just knew, trust that. Let’s follow that and see if she’d be up for joining our merry band.”
She wasn’t at first. When her agent despatched her the script, explaining it was an hour-long drama on ABC, she responded, “No, thanks.”
“I’m more of a dick-and-ball joke kind of streaming person,” she says.
When Olson’s agent despatched her the script for “High Potential,” she mentioned, “No, thanks.” However as soon as she learn the pilot, she fell in love with the character.
(Marcus Ubungen/Los Angeles Occasions)
However she lastly acquiesced to studying the pilot and fell in love with the character. It was additionally a chance to stretch herself. She at all times infuses comedy into her characters however had been itching to do one thing that wasn’t simply comedy.
“I wanted to play a real person,” she says. “Dee is not a real person. I try hard not to make her into a cartoon character, but she’s not a real person. I wanted to play somebody who had ups and downs and good days and bad days.”
That’s definitely true of Morgan, a mom of three, whose causes for turning into a police marketing consultant are twofold. She’s in want of a gradual job and paycheck, however she additionally thinks the pinnacle of the key crimes division, Selena, performed by Judy Reyes, will help her discover her teenage daughter’s father. It seems like he deserted the household, however Morgan is aware of there’s one thing else afoot.
However with a brand new pursuit got here new pressures, and Olson was nervous she was going to disappoint longtime followers who wished pure silliness from her, together with those that are nonetheless lamenting the 2018 cancellation of her Fox sitcom “The Mick,” the place she performed a hilariously scuzzy girl in control of elevating her wealthy niece and nephews. Morgan has Olson’s wry supply, however she’s not pratfalling, gangly limbs akimbo. To that finish, Olson not solely wished to signal on to “High Potential” to star, but additionally to supply.
“I was really hell-bent on making this just as good, just different,” she says.
“High Potential” additionally arrived on the proper time for Olson, when she might throw herself into one thing all consuming. After she had two youngsters along with her husband and “Sunny” costar, Rob McElhenney, Olson by no means stopped working, however she thought-about being a mom her No. 1 precedence. Now that her kids are sufficiently old — one is 14, the opposite 12 — she felt she might step again.
“I was really hell-bent on making this just as good, just different,” Olson says of “High Potential,” which she additionally produces.
(Marcus Ubungen/Los Angeles Occasions)
“My kids are old enough now to be like, Dad’s going to take you to school in the morning, Dad’s going to put you to bed,” she says. “I was home every night for bedtime, maybe a couple exceptions, but it feels good to jump in and give all of that creative energy that I was pouring toward parenting to give this project my full attention.” She provides, “I wouldn’t be able to do this show half-assed.”
Olson and McElhenney at all times examine in with each other earlier than taking up a brand new undertaking. “Sunny” movies when all of the members of the solid could make it occur, however along with “Sunny,” he additionally created and stars in Apple TV+’s “Mythic Quest” and has an FX documentary sequence concerning the Welsh soccer group he co-owns, “Welcome to Wrexham.”
“When we sat down and talked about what she wanted to do over the next couple of years, I feel like she really put the effort, the time and love into her role [as caregiver], and I felt it was my time to return that,” he says.
McElhenney has been wildly impressed along with her means to remodel into Morgan on-screen.
“There were, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen, maybe 10 different moments across the first half of the season where it felt like I was watching a different person than I knew,” he says. “That’s just a testament to her skill.”
Olson attributes Morgan’s eccentric look — a nod to the French sequence — with excessive heels and pretend fur within the midst of against the law scene, to serving to her rework. Throughout filming of the pilot, she was very particular about how she didn’t need the make-up artist to do the very best job along with her eyeliner, selecting an offbeat purple shade at that.
Morgan’s eccentric type is a nod to a French sequence the present relies on.
(David Bukach/Disney)
“I don’t dress like that, I never wear heels,” she says. “This particular costume is very helpful for getting into character.”
The scenes she has to work on essentially the most are those the place Morgan is spouting off information, that are troublesome to memorize and might’t maintain any improvisation. She additionally needs to convey Morgan’s frustration that everybody else doesn’t suppose as quick as she does.
“I’m always trying to toy with that idea of her brain works too fast for her mouth,” she says. “I kind of want it to look in my face like, ‘Don’t you guys get it? I’m giving you like 50%, you should be able to fill in the other 50%.’ ”
Within the second half of the primary season, Goddard says, audiences can see how Olson has discovered her footing with the character.
“By the finale, you can just see, ‘Oh, we can take this character to some pretty spectacular places,’” he says. “I, quite frankly, don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of her potential.”
If it took Olson a short while to sink herself into Morgan, Dee on “Sunny” is sort of a second pores and skin at this level.
Once we speak, she has simply completed capturing the seventeenth season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and this season features a crossover episode with “Abbott Elementary.” She had three or 4 days off between wrapping “High Potential” on the finish of October and beginning the newest “Sunny.” Dee is straightforward, although.
“She lives inside of me at all times,” she says. “She’s really made me a better person.”
How has anybody from the notoriously rotten gang at Paddy’s made somebody higher?
“It just sort of allows you to be like, ‘Oh my life is pretty good,’” Olson says. “I don’t need to be awake at 3 in the morning thinking, ‘I’m not doing things right.’ Dee’s not doing things correctly. You’re fine.”
