There’s no whippits at the grocery store for Kaitlin Olson. Unlike her character on Fox’s “The Mick,” the actress says she micromanages her life and rarely gets to cast off her impulse control.
Olson, along with “Shameless” star William H. Macy, “Silicon Valley” star Thomas Middleditch, and “Love” star Gillian Jacobs, talked about what it’s like to play a character who makes fast, sometimes terrible decisions. (The fifth panelist, “Silicon Valley” star Kumail Nanjiani, plays programmer Dinesh, whose impulse control seems just great.)
“I find it freeing. I’m a control freak. I’m a mom, I have two little boys. I have to micromanage everything. So I love playing a character who’s just like winging it and has to take what happens and figure it out. It’s funnier to me,” Olson said.
Supermarket whippits and parking-lot chasers are just the beginning for Olson’s character, Mackenzie “Mickey” Murphy, who is forced to become marginally more responsible when she takes charge of her sister’s three spoiled kids after sis flees the country.
Child abandonment might seem like the setup to a much heavier story, but Olson says audiences are used to blending comedy and drama.
“Comedy is sort of getting smarter and people are getting smarter and you want to see more depth instead of more just cotton candy joke-joke-punchline,” said Olson, whose previous show, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” found dark laughter last season in subjects including racism and murder.
Olson’s answer to the impulse control question is at 9:30 in the video below, and she talks about comedy getting smarter at the 5-minute mark. But you should just watch the whole thing.
Check back for more videos from all the panelists, and click her to watch Nanjiani ask Macy a really good question.