For the first time at the Emmy Awards, married actors and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” co-stars Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney are both nominees at the same time. Three-time nominee Olson, once again in guest comedy actress for playing Deborah Vance’s daughter DJ on HBO/Max’s “Hacks,” and twice-nominated McElhenney as one of the executive producers of FX’s “Welcome to Wrexham,” earning another nod for unstructured reality program.
“It’s exciting,” McElhenney tells PvNew‘s Awards Circuit Podcast, which got the duo together to talk about their busy schedules. “We’ve had a bit of a dearth of awards in the McElhenney-Olson house. So it feels good to be recognized by the community.”
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Of course, McElhenney enjoys mentioning that only he and “Wrexham” have come home with a statue so far, via the previous Emmy ceremony in January. “I was considering putting mine on the nightstand at the house,” he quips, “just to remind my bride. Or maybe make it into a lamp so that she can see it as she comes into the room.”
For the podcast, McElhenney visited the PvNew studios, while Olson — taking a break while shooting her new ABC series “High Potential” — got on Zoom to join in. Somehow technology worked, and for half an hour they riffed about their Emmy noms, the upcoming season of “Sunny,” how McElhenney was left on the cutting room floor of his “Wrexham” partner Ryan Reynolds’ little film “Deadpool & Wolverine,” plus what they thought of our suggestion that McElhenney and Olson should host the Emmys.
Listen below!
As veteran actors, McElhenney and Olson are each other’s biggest supporters — but also, they say, each other’s toughest critics. When McElhenney watched Season 3 of “Hacks,” he said he immediately knew Olson had given another Emmy-worthy performance — particularly in those heartbreaking mother-daughter moments with Jean Smart as Deborah.
“I had a really tragic moment earlier this year when we were watching an episode of ‘Hacks’ that Kaitlin was in, in which she’s nominated for an Emmy,” he jokes. “And I realized halfway through the episode that it was the best thing she’d ever done. And I realized I had no part in it!”
Olson, meanwhile, said she was excited for McElhenney from the very beginning when he and Reynolds decided to buy into the Wrexham football team and make a TV show about it. “I was just so proud of him for seeing this idea and the complexity of what the show was really going to be about,” she says. “He wanted to make an incredible documentary about a small town that rallies around their sport, because that’s the thing that unites them. I always thought it was such an incredible idea. I hate when we’re miked and on camera. I don’t mind an interview, but trying to block out the cameras and have a normal conversation is the thing I find that very challenging. But I’m rarely in that position anymore. They’re not at our house anymore.”
Even McElhenney says now he really didn’t know what he was getting into. “I realized very quickly that Wrexham was going to be 365 because the season itself is 10 months long, and then the off time is two months. But so many moves happen in the off season.
“You don’t realize how invasive it’s going to be,” he adds. “I think it was maybe the first interview for the show that I hadn’t really considered, ‘oh my, we’re putting our our personal stories out there and and I’m no longer presenting a character. I’m presenting myself. And if they dislike me, I can’t hide behind the mask of a character. It’s me.”
Not only has “Welcome to Wrexham” won the Emmy and become a smash for FX, but the team keeps winning, getting league promotions two years in a row. And if they get promoted for a third time, they’re in striking distance of the Premier League.
“We have a theoretical chance, and it is possible,” he says. “But the jump in player wage is, I’m not exaggerating, a billion dollars. But we’re in it to win. That was always the goal. We just didn’t know that it would happen so quickly.”
Good thing the McElhenney-Olson family has multiple jobs. Olson is wrapping up the first 13 episodes of ABC’s “High Potential,” in which she plays a single mom who uses her exceptional mind and unconventional knack for solving crimes to assist a by-the-book seasoned detective.
“I was really excited to to play something very different,” she says. “I love a crime show. I love a procedural, and I love a twist on anything, and trying to take something and elevate it. At the heart of it is this woman who is complicated and messy and stubborn and super smart. The relationship with her and her kids is a big part of it, which I love. There’s something for everybody in this one.”
And McElhenney approves, she adds. “I was very nervous for him to watch the pilot, because he also knows what he’s doing and I trust his taste. He’s also a very honest person. Sometimes that’s painful, but it was exciting when he liked it.”
Says McElhenney: “It’s ‘Good Will Hunting’ with murder. I mean, who didn’t love ‘Good Will Hunting’ and who doesn’t love watching murder shows!”
As Olson completes the initial order on “High Potential,” work is already beginning on the new Season 17 of “Sunny.” Writing has already started on the next eight episodes, McElhenney says.
“The beauty of doing eight episodes a year, we feel like if the network is is still willing to pay us to make it, and the audience is still willing to show up, that we have to give our all,” he says. “So for the three months that it takes to really to make ‘Sunny’ soup to nuts, we give everything.”
Adds Olson: “It’s one of those things, like having kids, it feels like it’s been on forever and yet it’s flying by.”
Their busy schedules is why it probably wouldn’t have made sense for McElhenney and Olson to host this year’s Emmys, although we pitched the idea hard in a recent Awards Circuit column. The duo says they were flattered by the idea, although McElhenney admits, “I don’t know if there’s enough Xanax in the world for for me to get through that night. I would be terrifying, don’t you think?
“I know we would have a blast. The question is, would the audience?” he adds. “I mean, it is the it is a notorious room, because you’re in a room full of people who either are anxious about their own nominations and whether or not they’re going to win or they’ve already not won, and they just want to get through the evening.”
Olson did say our comparison of her to Lucille Ball was “the best compliment of my life.”
Meanwhile, something you won’t see just yet is McElhenney in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” At the time of recording, McElhenney hadn’t yet heard from Reynolds on why he wound up cut from the film.
“Apparently my my performance was not up to par,” he quips. “It is not the first time that I’ve been excised from the final cut of a film. It’s happened many times, and I try not to take it personally, but this time, I think it was personal. I’m still waiting for him to say, ‘surprise!’
McElhenney expects to have some fun with that awkward situation on “Wrexham.” “I think we’re going to ask Marvel’s approval, to put the sequence into the show. I know that there was a lot of visual effects that were supposed to go into the sequence, and we thought it would be funny, because obviously that might be the reason that it got cut — because it’s probably too expensive.
“But it was, honestly, so great to go over there and see him in his element,” he adds. “Because I’ve been technically working with Ryan as we’re doing the documentary, but I’ve never seen him at work. And to see that machine that is the Marvel franchise, and specifically ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ was an honor to be a part of it. I got to play with the claws a little bit. Apparently, so did Ryan, because he used them to to excise me from his little film. Literally.”
Also on this episode of the Awards Circuit Podcast, the Roundtable goes through the comedy series acting categories, and we kick off Phase 2 Emmy voting.
PvNew’s “Awards Circuit” podcast, hosted by Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Emily Longeretta, Jenelle Riley and Michael Schneider, who also produces, is your one-stop source for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each episode, “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives, discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines, and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts.
