In 'High Potential', Kaitlin Olson gets smart

Earlier this month, actress Caitlin Olson was slicing a lemon in her Los Angeles kitchen.

“I really had to cut it hard,” he said. “I put my 100 percent effort into it.”

The knife slipped, nearly severing her pinky, which explains why, one morning in Manhattan, the 49-year-old Olson accessorized with a black finger splint in her black silk blouse and black pants. (She also wore an array of diamonds, the size of a kumquat.) The look was working. A waiter asked if she was in town for fashion week.

There are some things that Olson — tall and emphatically blond, with screwball energy — does lightly. As far as jokes, physical stunts and apparently cooking concerns, his approach is total communication. On the set of “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” the cheeky FX comedy he co-starred in for nearly 20 years, he broke his leg, dislocated his calf and suffered at least one potential concussion. “Definitely worth it,” he said of the scene.

It wasn't his first food-prep injury, and he avoided the emergency room. He didn't have time. In addition to “Sunny,” she is a guest star on the HBO show “Hacks” and stars in a new ABC sitcom, “High Potential,” in which she plays a cleaning woman who consults with the police. . It premieres on Tuesday.

While this isn't Olson's first series lead (that would be the Fox comedy “The Mick”) or his only chance to show off his knack for drama (see also: “Hacks”), “High Potential” is his giddy, uncomfortable, ironic gift that Olson admires. .

“There's nothing better than saying something and making people laugh or doing something physical with your body that makes people laugh,” Olson said. “There is nothing like that. It is very selfish high. It's all for me.”

At this point, the waiter came and took his green juice order. He asked her if she had any allergies. He admits to a qi sensitivity. “My throat is closed,” she told me. “It's exciting!” But what is the use of a little anaphylactic shock?

“Oh, we should do it,” she said, eyes twinkling. “That will be a fun part of the interview.”

Olson grew up mostly in Portland, Ore., the child of a supportive family. He discovered theater in elementary school but drifted away when he was in a devastating bike accident the summer before starting junior high. Walking the halls with a shaved head and a disfigured face, his first experience was feeling like an outsider. “I just wanted to disappear,” she said.

He regained some confidence in high school and went out for plays again. After discovering a gift for physical comedy, he enrolled in the University of Oregon's theater program and after graduation moved to Los Angeles, taking classes with the Groundlings, a famous improv troupe. A few years later he began landing paid work: a segment on “Coyote Ugly,” an arc on “The Drew Carey Show,” a couple hidden-camera series, which he hated.

“We made a lot of people cry, and I was like, 'That's why I didn't get into this business,'” he said.

In 2004, he auditioned for “Sunny” and was offered the part of bartender Sweet D. But when she received the initial scripts, she found out that the lines she read in the audition were for a male character. DK was written as bland and colorless, a killjoy.

Olson could use the work — he's juggling three part-time jobs. But he told Rob McElhaney, a producer, that he was out. “Why would I be the worst part of a really incredible show?” He remembered saying. “Like, I'd sit there and watch you have fun, and I'd just be sad.”

McElhaney asked her to reconsider, telling her that writers should learn to write for a woman only. Olson told him that they had to write a funny character regardless. “And I'll just bring the woman, because I'm a woman,” he said.

McElhenny agreed, and the writing flourished. But D's carefree, highly physical, bet-the-firm policy? This is all Olson.

“The hardest part of making 'Sunny' is trying to keep a straight face when she's on,” McElhenny said. Reader, she married him. They now have two sons.

In 2017, John and Dave Chernin — the writers of “Sunny” — created “The Mick” with him in mind. Olson enjoyed headlining a network comedy, but her character, a lovable dirtbag stuck taking care of her sister's kids, was closer to a caricature Dee's spirit. No one seems to believe Olson as a human woman.

This has changed with “Hacks”. Showrunners Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jane Statsky created the part of DJ, the only daughter of Jean Smart's neglectful comedienne mother, just for her. “He has this fluid funny thing that stands out to us as kind of supernatural,” Aniello said.

Aniello didn't know how Olson would handle the more emotional moments. But what he got was a skilled dramatic actor, capable of conjuring complex emotional states.

“There's something very raw and honest about his performance,” Aniello says. “You feel like they're coming from his gut.”

Olson took on the challenge of playing a real woman with real wounds. “People are going to be like, 'Wait, hold on a second, he might have emotions,'” Olson said. It was her first experience with prestige television, which went well, as it earned her two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress. (She recently lost to Jamie Lee Curtis of “The Bear,” which she described as a relief on Instagram: “If I had won, I would never have to complain loudly and widely about winning an Emmy again.”)

An adaptation of a French series, a procedural in the vein of “Colombo” or “Murder, he wrote,” “High Potential.” Showrunner Drew Goddard wrote the character of Morgan for Olson, saying the show would live or die by its star. He needed an actor who could swing from broad comedy to high drama, and he sensed Olson, whom he had admired in “Sunny,” could handle it.

“It's really hard to push yourself to the edge of comedy while maintaining a sympathetic humanity,” he said.

Morgan, like the other women in Olson's repertory, is gritty and intense. But Olson has never played a character so smart — Morgan's IQ is 160 — or so confident. Olson found that there was plenty he could draw on.

“I don't have a 160 IQ, but I know what it's like to not be able to turn your brain off,” she said. And she finally likes playing a mom, though she thinks Morgan can stand to multitask less.

Olson, however, doesn't think he would make a great detective. “I would be bored,” he said. “I'll do a puzzle for a while, and then I'm like, 'You know what? You guys go ahead.'

Now, with three series, Olson doesn't have the luxury of boredom. “Hacks” has been renewed. “Sunny” will begin shooting for its 17th season later this year. He wants to do a few more seasons of “High Potential” and hopes that “Sunny” lasts forever. (She has big plans for menopause D.) And, yes, it's a lot of multitasking, but it's also her way of moving through the world. It's how he deals, at first, with discomfort, uncertainty, hurt.

“When in doubt, I'm fine,” she said, “I'm going to make you laugh.”