Katilin Olson Had to Talk to Her Therapist About Her Kids Developing An ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’-Style Sense of Humor
At some point in every celebrity parent’s life, they have to have a difficult discussion with their child about what’s sticking out of daddy’s exercise bike.
Despite the fact that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia brought Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson together and, therefore, literally started their family, the husband and wife’s hit sitcom is only marginally more kid-friendly than Paddy’s Pub itself ever since the bar stopped accepting fake IDs back in Season One. As such, when Olson and McElhenney realized that their two now-adolescent sons were watching Always Sunny and learning their parents’ sense of humor through jokes about ass-blasting and nose clams, Olson and McElhenney faced a unique parenting challenge wherein they had to figure out how to teach their progeny the timeless lesson of “Do as I say, not as I do” without cracking up at their kids’ crass and entirely inherited comedy stylings.
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Olson appeared on last night’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers where she admitted that she had to seek professional counseling to navigate the difficulties of raising teenagers who like the exact same style of TV-MA jokes that their profane parents tell professionally. The advice that Olson’s therapist gave her for dealing with her young sons’ mature jokes was apparently, “Okay, okay, you can laugh, but what you need to say is, ‘Now, I think that’s funny, but let’s imagine you’re out in the real world and people don’t understand who you are. They might think you’re a rapist or a murderer.'”
The topic of Olson and McElhenney’s two sons and their budding senses of blue humor came up when Meyers asked his guest whether an iconic line from the last season of Hacks ever comes up in her day-to-day life. In the episode “The Roast of Deborah Vance,” Olson’s character DJ attempts to coin a catchphrase when comically insulting her mother, settling on “What a c*nt,” a punchline that Olson’s own kids adore but fans on the street still consider secondary to a certain other famous line.
“I do get a lot of ‘Dee’s a bird,’” Olson said of the most common chirp she gets from Always Sunny fans in public settings, “But no ‘What a c*nt’ yet, much to my children’s dismay because they did see the episode and they do love yelling it at me.”
Olson admitted that, yes, her kids watch her shows, and, no, she doesn’t think that’s particularly positive for their development. “We’ve tried to like keep both of them away from Sunny — I had both of them while I was shooting the show, that’s how it’s been — and we just, we can’t keep them from it anymore,” Olson said of her 12- and 14-year-old’s fascination with their parents’ work.
On the topic of her oldest son Axel Lee’s exposure to Always Sunny, Olson reported, “We walked in on him the other day, the 14-year-old, watching the episode where Mac builds the Ass Pounder 4000, which is an exercise bike that has a penis coming out of it to motivate you, but it’s a fist, but it’s not a fist.”
Unsurprisingly, with Olson’s impressionable sons watching Always Sunny episodes like “Hero or Hate Crime?”, their humor — much like their lexicon of slurs — has become pretty advanced and preposterously improper. “Listen, they’re both very funny, but at this age, the sense of humor that they’ve adapted from us is just so horrifically inappropriate,” Olson said of her sons, telling them, “(In) a few more years you’re going to fine-tune that and be so funny, but you can’t say that at school!”
Because Olson and McElhenney’s sons have the same sense of humor as their professionally inappropriate parents, Olson finds discipline difficult when her sons tell horrible jokes that make her laugh. Thankfully, Olson goes to a good therapist who can help her walk the fine line so that she can both enjoy her sons’ jokes and prevent either of them from turning into a mini-Dennis.
But if Olson really wanted to stir the pot and see what her sons are capable of in a comedy setting, she should ask her therapist to decide who needs to do the dishes.
