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.

words by Randy Gambill, photos by Robert Todd Williamson

As I walk around the campus of Roosevelt Elementary School in Santa Monica on this bright and sunny Friday, I notice a smattering of kids enjoying recess and my mind turns to the many more inside their respective classrooms – all of these innocent children are most certainly oblivious to the madness that is transpiring in their own gymnasium. 

That’s because FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, entering its fourth season this September, has invaded the campus of these unsuspecting tots and transformed their gymnasium stage into the setting of a musical operetta sequence, its main theme being the delicate subject of pedophilia.
Oh, the irony. 

Welcome to the no holds barred, demented world of this scathingly irreverent show, most oft-described as “Seinfeld on crack”. For those of you who don’t know, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows the demented adventures of four young miscreants and their dubious father figure (Danny DeVito), who run an Irish pub in Philadelphia. The show subscribes to the Seinfeld credo of “no lessons, no hugs” but one-ups them with its own apparent motto, “no fear of being too outrageously offensive.” The show is a gleeful, hilarious punch-in-the-face to any sacred cow you might want to hold dear, from mental retardation to Nazism, and the gang takes on all subjects with equal-opportunity offensiveness. The brilliance of the show is that it does not set out to shock for pure shock value and its one criteria is to make you laugh, which it does – nastily, frequently, and out loud. 

Sunny is the brainchild of Philadelphia native Rob McElhenney, who also stars in the show, along with Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day. The trio are executive producers on the show and also write many of the episodes, in addition to providing craft service on set (just kidding). The beautiful and funny Kaitlin Olson is the lone female of the group, Sweet Dee, and after a brilliant but ratings-wobbly first season, DeVito joined the proceedings to provide a little star wattage. Today’s filming features an operetta sequence performed by the entire cast, a culmination of a musical dream hatched by Charlie (Charlie Day) in the 3rd season. The sequence is a hilariously perverse take on bargain basement Community Theater, featuring the show’s recurring musical creations Day Man and Night Man, as well as the pedophilia theme. In typical Sunny fashion the gang from Paddy’s Pub is performing this shameful spectacle for a group of senior citizens. It adds to the dementia of the proceedings to see all the senior citizen extras milling about and sometimes having to be led around by attentive PA’s. Just another crazy day on the set of this wickedly subversive show. 

Director Matt Shakman (best remembered as a child actor on the Growing Pains spinoff Just the Ten of Us) has decided to shoot the operetta in its entirety by covering the action with multiple cameras, privileging everyone to see the cast perform an actual musical in continuity right before our eyes. 

Since most film and TV is shot in short bits and pieces, it is shocking to see the cast enact the entire thing in real time. Danny DeVito, in full troll regalia, musically and sexually propositions Glenn Howerton, resplendent in kiddie pajamas, on an imaginative set that looks like Dr. Seuss done cheap. Glenn Howerton is Julliard trained and DeVito can do anything, but it is still surprising to see how well they sing and how brilliantly they perform in long, uninterrupted takes, never stumbling over a line or missing a musical cue. 

The charming Olson appears in a pink fairy/princess-type outfit and in a sing-songy aside to the audience, disassociates herself from the subject matter of the play while trawling for a date. Finally the Night Man himself, Rob McElhenney, appears in his Karate Kid-inspired outfit and after a musical number and some weird martial arts moves, and attempts to rape Howerton. Howerton finds his strength and unzips his pajamas to reveal a tight, glam-rock satiny number (He wore this outfit in the Season 3 predecessor to this episode) and the musical battle between Day Man and Night Man begins. 

Shakman puts the cast through this sequence a number of times and their enthusiasm and professionalism never breaks. Watching the deranged shenanigans of these brilliantly funny people got me to thinking: 

What makes people funny? And why are so many people NOT funny? 

Everyone claims that humor is subjective, but lets face it, humor is one of the more objective qualities a person possesses. If you are funny people laugh at you. If you are not, they don’t. I’ve had to endure far too many humorless jackasses and bad improv nights to think otherwise. So I posed my hard-hitting two-part question to some of the cast members and got
some pretty interesting responses. 

Kaitlin Olson seems to enjoy the question and offers an initially emotional response, “This question makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Well, my own personal feeling is that people who aren’t funny are trying too hard. I think humor has to come from playing around. You have to be playing around and loving it. And when people are trying to be funny, for me, that’s what I don’t find funny.” 

Glenn Howerton offered a more analytical response, “I think there is a certain cynicism that a lot of people who are funny have. And that’s not to say that people who are funny are totally cynical. But I think there has gotta be a reason why a lot of stand up comedians, when you actually meet them, are cynical people. They’re not very happy.” 

I offer: “They’re angry, alcoholics sometimes?” 

“Yeah! Or there’s a lot of anger, and I think the reason is because, to be funny, I think there has to be a different part of you that sees the world as being fucked up and ridiculous and just insane. And you can either cope with it or not, but I think you have a certain ability to look at things from the outsiders’ point of view that there are a lot of things in this world and a lot of people who are ridiculous and crazy and stupid. Which sounds very judgmental, and it is, but I think you can have a cynical point of view and be a positive person. I do think thatyou have to have a certain amount of cynicism in order to be a funny person, to recognize irony.” 

Charlie Day’s response was both self-deprecating and ahem, funny. “What makes people funny? That is a good question. A lifetime of petty misery, I think. Yeah, and maybe a sense of humility. And the ability to laugh at themselves…and especially at others. But if you can’t poke fun at yourself then you start to become unfunny.” – I chime in to say that I know a lot of people who proclaim themselves as funny and they are not funny. – “Well, you know, it’s subjective I think. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t find me funny at all.” I have to say Charlie, they are wrong! Yes, he agrees, “They are just wrong!” 

The show has been building from cult item to full-fledged hit, and is on its way to becoming a comedy classic in the pantheon with Seinfeld, Friends, etc. Rob McElhenney, the creator of the show, who is a native of Philadelphia, shared with me his true source of inspiration for the show, “I think initially we were pretty influenced by, certainly Seinfeld, but at the specific time we made the original show we were inspired by the British version of The Office.” 

Certainly the addition of comic great Danny DeVito in the second season boosted the show’s exposure. Charlie Day explains how the busy actor-director-producer decided to come play with the Sunny kids on a regular basis, “Danny’s kids were fans of the show and Danny was a fan through them. We were at a point after the first season that FX President John Landgraf wanted to see if we could get a little more attention to the show by getting a famous person. Danny was at the top of the list and so Rob went and sat down with Danny and pitched him on the show and then must have threatened him or something because he took it.” 

DeVito has his own reasons for taking time from his busy feature schedule to be a series regular again, “I had fun doing Taxi. It was five years with a cast that was like a family and it was more fun than anyone can imagine. The Sunny boys and girls, coupled with the story of Frank being joined at the hip with these young talented actors, as well as the endless possibilities for depravity was too much fun to pass up. I mean fun-loving colleagues who care, who are always there for you, writing that’s delivering for the characters, and for the audience…what greater thing can a humble fun-loving thespian desire?”  

After lunch, the second half of Charlie’s musical is being shot, also straight through, culminating with Day, who is dressed as a cross between Willy Wonka and a pimp, descending from the stage on his sun dais and making the musical cast complete. Day displays a surprisingly good and wide-ranging voice –- he does a great rock and roll solo. 

It is a uniquely pleasurable treat to see all five members of this great cast dancing and belting out songs and just being plain silly on-stage together during this musical finale. However inconclusive my poll on the nature of being funny might be, it is an empirical fact that what the cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is doing right in front of my eyes is funny. It’s actually more than just funny. It’s a comic bliss-out.