Kaitlin Olson’s Sunny Disposition

Posted on 01. Sep, 2008 by Administrator in Profiles

Funny women have it tough. They are either ghettoized as funny but unsexy, reviled as abrasive man-haters, or relegated to bimbo status. But there is a new strain of funny women: Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Mann among them, who seem to have the whole package: Smart, sexy, and undeniably funny enough to keep the most virulent, beer-swilling women-haters at bay. Add Kaitlin Olson to the list. When I present Miss Olson with the idea that she is the latest addition to this list of hilarious and beautiful women she responds with charming modesty, “Thank you. I really appreciate that. That’s funny. Out of those people that you named – I think all those women are beautiful, but I don’t think if you ask any of them, they would describe themselves as beautiful. They wouldn’t identify themselves as beautiful. I think that you just need that tough junior high school experience to kind of toughen you up and give you something else to fall back on. And I know it’s true for several of them, I don’t know about all of them. But, thank you for the compliment.” Olson is entering her fourth season on the hit FX show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. As “Sweet Dee”, the lone women amongst a group of raucous cut-ups, Olson’s prodigious comedy chops get a workout as she matches wits (or witlessness) with the fellas in the depraved comedy world that Sunny inhabits. Keeping up with the boys is no stretch for Olson, in fact, when describing her style of comedy, the old Secret deodorant tagline “Strong enough for a man but made for a women” comes to mind. “I just think it’s funny, but people often describe my sense of humor as very male.” I offer, Well I think so, you seem to get along with the boys pretty well. “Yeah, and that’s what I find funny. I loved Saturday Night Live. So, I had a lot of male inspiration, like Will Ferrell I think is hilarious. I love that he is hilarious and clean at the same time, which is really great.” When I mention that many of the most recent standouts on SNL have been women, Olson is quick to join in, “I love Kristin Wiig – she is really wonderful and I always loved Gilda Radner.” Olson shares some other sources of inspiration, “I think Annette Bening is brilliant. I love Jane Lynch and Joan Cusack is wonderful; they are all very real. I don’t like overblown, showy. I like it when it’s big, but real. That’s why I really love shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development, all that stuff is very big, but it’s based in reality.” One of Olson’s realities when she first signed on for Sunny duty was what her place on the show would be. Sunny was created by Rob McElhenney, and it was also developed by him and co-star Glenn Howerton, as well as co-star Charlie Day who was also involved from the very beginning. So of the original quartet, Olson is the only one to have come from outside the circle. I ask her if that was a scary situation to come into. “It could have been tough if they were dicks, but they’re not. They are so great, but when they wanted to cast me in the show, the Dee character was not defined really.” Apparently there was nothing written for the Sweet Dee character at the time of auditions. Show creator McElhenney had Olson read a scene written for Dennis (Glenn Howerton) which Olson was unaware of at the time. “Yeah! I wanted to take the role because even though they hadn’t developed this character yet, they did write this awesome scene for her. It turns out it was Dennis’ scene. But Rob called me and said, ‘We want you to be in our show, and we want you to be our fourth person, equally. We want you to be funny; we want to write well for you.’ And he said, ‘I know that the character isn’t defined, but what I would love to do is have you help us define it. And we haven’t really written for women so, it’ll be a process for us. But we want your input, we want see stuff that you would love to do, stuff that you do well, stuff that you think is funny.’ And I didn’t know him at all, but I just had to believe him because I thought that the show was really funny! So, I just went for it, and he absolutely didn’t let me down. I feel like my character is getting stronger every year, and they really write for my strengths, and they ask for my input, and they let me play around with my dialogue.” Olson’s performance as Sweet Dee is a comic tour de force, whether pretending to be disabled, getting addicted to crack, or almost having sex with her father, (Danny DeVito, who turns out not to be her father-don’t ask) she hurls herself headlong into one depraved situation after another. Speaking of depravity, Olson sheds some light on the commonplace gripe that the show sometimes skirts too far over the edge, “But it’s not like we’re trying to be edgy. Everyone throws that word around, it’s not like we’re trying to be terrible. It’s that, what’s funny to us is stuff that hasn’t necessarily been done before. Just seeing the same stuff over and over isn’t funny to us.” Of the four original Sunny cast members, Olson has arguably chalked up the most extensive showbiz resume. In addition to Sunny she has recurring roles on two other series, as Becky, Larry David’s sister-in-law on Curb Your Enthusiasm and as Hartley Underwood, the one-armed neighbor on The Riches. Olson has racked up a series of other comedy gigs that are strangely impressive, appearing on Punk’d, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and the short-lived Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show. On the horizon for Olson is a co-starring role in the upcoming feature film Weather Girl, “Mark Harmon is in it and Tricia O’Kelley is the star. She’s currently on The New Adventures of Old Christine. She’s adorable. And Mark Harmon and I play off of each other. We’re co-anchors. There are lots of good characters and Jane Lynch is amazing in it.” Olson was born in Tigard, Oregon, and after graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in Theatre Arts, she made her way to the City of Angels where she promptly began training at the legendary Groundlings Improv school: “The Groundlings is an amazing training ground. It’s a war zone. But, it’s an amazing training ground if you can get through that. I was in the Sunday Company, every single Sunday for a year. It was great and offered me a lot of great exposure. That’s where the producers of The Drew Carey Show found me. Olson’s career is nothing if not eclectic, her break on The Drew Carey Show was playing the office nemesis of Mimi (Kathy Kinney) for two seasons and her film debut was in the cinematic classic, Coyote Ugly, “Yeah, you can see me in that amazing flick. Coyote Ugly was actually one of my first jobs. (laughs) “I was bidding on the male lead (Adam Garcia) in the bar, and I was drunk and screaming and loud. And I’m fighting for him and I don’t win. I never win.” On the contrary, Miss Olson, in the deliriously beautiful comedic actress game, you’ve hit the jackpot.

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