Kaitlin Olson interview: ‘Hacks’
As an encore to her first Emmy nomination for “Hacks” in Season 2, guest star Kaitlin Olson hit the jackpot in Season 3: “The Roast of Deborah Vance,” the first of three episodes in which Olson appears as DJ, the emotionally stunted daughter of famed comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart). In the episode, DJ relishes her opportunity to roast her comedian mother during a televised event, including zinging Deborah with a profane and immediately resonant catchphrase: “What a c–t.”
“I just couldn’t wait. I was counting down the days to do it. I was so excited,” Olson tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview when asked about the episode. “It’s just so good. It’s got everything. DJ is such a mess and she’s so vulnerable and making stupid decisions that she’s 100 percent standing by – and then she’s also correct in her assessment of the situation. There’s some redemption there too. I was delighted when I read that episode.”
Olson – perhaps best known for her lengthy run playing “Sweet” Dee Reynolds on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” – has appeared on “Hacks” since Season 1. “I love being a guest star on the show because as an audience member, I’m a fan of the show,” Olson says. “This is Jean and Hannah Einbinder’s show, and I love watching them. And I want it to be that when my character shows up, there’s something really special with the scene, and then I just want to be out of it and watch them do their thing.”
Season 3 of “Hacks” is a transformative one for DJ. The character is pregnant with her first child, in a committed relationship with her spouse, and maintains a sober lifestyle after years of work. But despite all her apparent personal growth, it isn’t until DJ roasts Deborah – and brings the house down in the process – that Deborah finally seems to approve of her daughter. But DJ has an epiphany after her performance too: Deborah is addicted to the crowd’s embrace and this realization allows DJ to let go of some of her deep insecurity. The culmination of this mother-daughter relationship plays out in a key scene between Olson and Smart toward the episode’s end.
“Leading up to that scene, every scene with Jean is very much DJ paying a lot of attention to what Deborah is doing and saying and giving to her, and basing her reactions and feedback off of what she’s getting from Deborah. Because all she wants is for her mom to validate her,” Olson says of the climactic moment in the episode, when DJ tells Deborah what she’s now realized about her mother. “But that was a scene where DJ didn’t care about what Deborah was saying…. I think that’s the first time there has been a scene with DJ and Deborah, where DJ wasn’t just fully [trying to get her attention]. Even if she’s poking her to try and get negative feedback, it was always about, how does my mom feel about me? How does my mom feel about this moment? And this was the scene where she was free for the first time.”
Like many characters played by Olson, DJ is a mix of contradictions – a person who perhaps deserves mockery because of her privileged upbringing and lifestyle, but also someone with deep issues of insecurity, trust, and self-hatred. “I find such joy in characters who are just total messes and I think just the more you dig into the reality of their experience that can either be very comedic or very emotional,” she explains while giving credit to “Hacks” co-creators Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, and Paul W. Downs for writing DJ as someone who was three-dimensional from the start.
“You can’t do a comedy and just have a comedic character, and then later, try to cram some emotion into their arc. It’s jarring and it doesn’t work,” she says. “But this character was always, I believe, supposed to be fun and funny and broken and intense…. I love characters like that.”
“Hacks” streams on Max.
