Kaitlin Olson on Ending ‘Hacks’ with an Instant-Classic Clown Routine: ‘I Always Hurt Myself — It’s Kind of My Thing’

[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Hacks” Season 5, Episode 5, “D’mazing Race.”]

“I don’t ever want to get hit by a car.”

That, apparently, is Kaitlin Olson‘s limit for physical comedy. In a recent interview with IndieWire, the Emmy-nominated star of “Hacks,” “High Potential,” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” said, because of her enthusiastic approach to pratfalls, she has a habit of getting hurt on set. (“It’s kind of my thing.”) But that never stops her from fully throwing herself down every staircase, out every window, and off every ledge she can find. In fact, she seeks them out. She always has.

“I remember back in high school, we did ‘Noises Off,'” Olson said, referencing Michael Frayn’s classic farce.” “There’s a point where my character almost falls over the balcony and I just kept going farther and farther over the balcony. My director was like, ‘Stop doing that.’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s funny.’ He’s like, ‘You’re going to fall, do not do that. It’s funny without you doing that.’ And I was like, ‘Well, now I want to do it more.'”

“It just felt right,” she continued. “I felt safe. I have long arms and legs, so it’s funny to throw them around and have them look ridiculous. I’m way more comfortable in situations like that than in a situation where I’m supposed to look good. That makes me uncomfortable.”

Knowing her love for physical comedy — as well as her preternatural prowess for executing every slip, fall, and screw-up — it’s no wonder the “Hacks” team crafted Olson’s final episode as an ode to her ridiculous slapstick skills. Episode 5, “D’Amazing Race,” serves as a crowning achievement for the actress’ work on the acclaimed series, and it almost didn’t happen.

The story follows Deborah (Jean Smart) and her daughter, DJ (Olson), as they embark on “The Amazing Race.” No, not an amazing race — the “Amazing Race.”

“So there was the line of dialogue in Season 2 about how [Deborah and Ava] would be great on ‘Amazing Race,'” Jeff Rosenberg, who directed Episode 5, said in a separate interview. “Ever since then, I was bugging [co-creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky] — in vans, at video village, everywhere. It was the best elevator pitch for an episode of television I’d ever heard. We have to get Deborah Vance on ‘Amazing Race.'”

Originally, the team thought the show’s main duo, Deborah and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), would travel around the world together on CBS’s reality-competition series. But while breaking the final season, a better fit emerged.

“In the first outline, it was similar: DJ was obsessed with ‘Amazing Race.’ It got her sober. She wanted to go on the show,” Rosenberg said, echoing what’s in the final cut. “But in that version, when she got injured, she got more injured, and Ava would have come in and replaced her. There were maybe going to be some other DJ storylines in another episode. Then the more they were diving into the episode, the more I think it became clear to them that this is the vehicle. This is the episode. Let’s contain it, and let’s really dive into it.”

What helped that realization come to light was the creative team’s deep appreciation (read: obsession) with “The Amazing Race.” Aniello and Downs became obsessed during the pandemic, bingeing season after season as their passion grew. Rosenberg said the writer behind “D’Amazing Race,” Pat Regan, is also a “humongous” fan, as well as the series’ art director, Jeanine Ringer and a number of other staffers. As for Rosenberg himself, he watched “no other television for three months” to get ready for Episode 5.

All of that expertise helped them realize “The Amazing Race” should become “D’Amazing Race.”

“‘Amazing Race’ as a structured show tests people’s relationships like no show I’ve ever seen,” Rosenberg said. “It’s always loved ones. There’s mothers and daughters, there’s fathers and daughters, there’s fathers and sons, there’s siblings, there’s best friends, there’s coworkers. There’s a season of strangers, but generally speaking, it’s always people who love each other, and I don’t think any team has ever made it through a season without having a full breakdown fight. People lose their minds on this show. Any couple that’s been on that show, I guarantee the most Googled thing [about them] is, ‘Did they break up after the show?’ or ‘Are they still married?’ or ‘What the hell happened to those two?’”

Considering the work DJ and Deborah have done across four seasons to fortify their fractured relationship made them an ideal pair to put to the test. But knowing Olson’s proclivity for slipping up in hysterical fashion made the match that much more appealing.

“Kaitlin has other things going on,” Rosenberg said, noting the star’s busy schedule on “High Potential” (31 episodes across two seasons) and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (Season 18 just wrapped production in April). “So there’s always the episode that’s the Kaitlin episode — it’s finding something that’s going to best showcase her as a performer, but also just [DJ and Deborah’s] relationship.”

Kaitlin Olson and Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’Courtesy of HBO Max

Olson said she’d only watched “The Amazing Race” a few times, but when she got the script for Episode 5, she honed in on what really mattered.

“Really, first and foremost, what jumped out at me was I knew it was very physical,” Olson said. “There were going to be insane physical things that we were going to have to do, which just always makes me laugh. So I was really excited.”

Olson channeled that excitement into the race, sprinting through airports, milking unruly goats, and carrying a wheel of cheese down a steep hill.

DJ fails every time. And that means Olson thrives.

“It’s truly my favorite thing to play: a person who is trying so hard and just blowing it every single time,” Olson said. “It’s about the physicality, but it’s really also about the energy of trying to keep it together when she’s absolutely livid and upset and furious with herself, while also trying to put on a show and smile. It’s all those things at once, and you kind of just feel it [when it works]. Also, you know when it’s funny [because] when they yell cut, people are laughing.”

“Kaitlin’s physical comedy is truly unparalleled in this world. She’s just a comic assassin,” Rosenberg said. “When she’s going, usually it’s hard to even interject or give notes because she’s so committed to it, and we are crying laughing. … I always say I’ve worked with quite a lot of actors who are unhinged — like fully unhinged — and Kaitlin’s ability to play unhinged while being completely in control of what she’s doing and understanding what the production needs and where the cameras are and being able to see the edit in her head, it’s truly one of the most impressive things that I’ve ever experienced working in this industry.”

It all leads to one last challenge and one last blunder. Deborah and DJ’s downfall arrives in the guise of a good fun: a clown routine. They have to dress up in clown suits, learn a simple dance, and match each other, on stage, in front of a panel of judges. But DJ’s false confidence and competitive nature combine to create a slo-motion catastrophe. After skipping the training sequence, they try to wing the routine and get stuck repeating the dance for hours on end.

DJ just can’t get it right, which provided a showcase for Olson getting it wrong.

“It was really important for the clown challenge to be as specific as possible,” Rosenberg said. “For every single stage of it, let’s make the more specific choice: It just became a game of figuring out the music for the dance, figuring out the choreography for the dance, figuring out the props and costumes for the dance. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

One of the puzzles was constructing a dance that was simple enough to believe anyone could do it, yet tricky enough for DJ to screw up in multiple ways.

“The dance was specifically built to have spots that would be easier to mess up,” Rosenberg said. “[Choreographer] Nicole [Berger] came to the table with a lot of things that could be messed up. Jean had ideas for things that could get messed up as well. They would rehearse in a rehearsal hall. Then Nicole would come back in either with Jean or with some videos of what they did, and Jen, Paul, and Lucia would watch it and be like, ‘Oh, what if she kicked the cane out of her hand here? Or what if she was just going the opposite direction and they were getting stopped?’ [The dance] felt like a team effort.”

Olson, however, took a different approach.

“I didn’t want to know much because I knew that DJ was bad at it,” Olson said. “They sent me the music and they sent me the choreography and I just didn’t watch it. I was like, I don’t want to know any of it, I just want to be as bad as possible. I felt worse for Jean because she had to actually memorize the routine.”

Kaitlin Olson and Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’Courtesy of HBO Max

“With Kaitlin, it was almost like if we don’t show her the dance ahead of time, she’s still going to be better than she needs to be,” Rosenberg said. “Jean is so brilliant and amazing at everything that she was able to figure it out very quickly. You make sure all the world feels right around them, and then at a certain point you say action and you just let them be the incredible performers they are.”

“Honestly, because we did that so many times, I accidentally knew more than I wanted to about the routine,” Olson said. “So at that point, you’re just trying to figure out, ‘OK, how can I mess it up in a different way?'”

Well, folks, she cracked it. The clown routine is an instant classic: the perfect set-up for Olson’s expertise, and an inspired execution that only a comedic titan can be counted on to deliver. (Reader, when I first saw the episode, I rewound that scene over and over, until I’d seen it four times. Watching it again for this story, it’s still a wonder.)

“There’s something so freeing about throwing yourself into something and just knowing that it isn’t supposed to look pretty,” Olson said. “It’s so much easier to shoot a scene where I am supposed to be messed up or hungover or I’ve just been burned and someone put the fire out. There’s such freedom to not trying to make it look good, just giving it a hundred percent, not thinking about what it looks like, but feeling what it’s going to feel like.”

“Back before Season 1, I think before Kaitlin had even officially come on board, Lucia had told me she was the actor she most wanted to work with,” Rosenberg said. “We’re all such big fans of Kaitlin. ‘The Nightman Cometh,’ the ‘Always Sunny’ episode, that’s my favorite episode of television; it’s maybe my favorite piece of media ever made. So honestly, for me, I’m eager for the world to see [‘D’Amazing Race’] because I really want Kaitlin to get the flowers she so deserves. She should have every award ever anyway, but please, world, just give her every award for this episode because she’s truly incredible.”

“The clown dance, that was the last scene that I shot,” Olson said. “I broke a nail really far down. My hand was in a lot of pain from smashing the cane everywhere. I always hurt myself — it’s kind of my thing. I wouldn’t be doing it right if I didn’t have some sort of physical injury at the end. So that was all happening, and then we were done and I was wrapped and the whole crew came out and I just didn’t expect to get so emotional. When you wrap something, you know they’re going to call, ‘That’s a wrap on Kaitlin for the season or the series or whatever,’ but it kind of snuck up on me. I didn’t really think about it. It’s such a special show.”

And while this may be DJ’s last big moment on “Hacks” — a sweet resolution to her relationship with Deborah, and a hilarious scene fans can cherish forever — it’s far from Olson’s slapstick swan song.

“I don’t ever want to get hit by a car. I don’t need that,” she said. “But anything else, I really want to do it. I’m so grateful for stunt people. I’ve got an incredible stunt woman in Kimberly [Shannon Murphy]. But they’re so good at their job, sometimes it looks [too] good. I never want it to look good. I want it to look ridiculous. So I always want to at least give it a shot. There are times when I’m just simply not allowed to. I’m not a great judge of character. I’ve hurt myself a bunch, but I’m always like, ‘Yeah, but I’ll be fine. It’ll be worth it.’”

She added, “Especially something like a clown dance, what could possibly go that wrong? I was bashing the cane, and I ripped a nail off. I hurt my hand. But those things are going to heal. I’m used to it. It’s so worth it to me.”

“Hacks” releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max. The series finale premieres May 28.