Why Kaitlin Olson Almost Turned Down High Potential

If you've watched Kaitlin Olson's ABC series "High Potential," it's hard to imagine anyone else on the planet playing cleaning woman turned LAPD liaison Morgan Gillory. Based on the French-Belgian series "HPI" (which stands for "Haut potentiel intellectuel"), "High Potential" perfectly casts Olson as a woman with an eidetic (or photographic) memory who ends up helping detectives like Adam Karadec (small-screen staple Daniel Sunjata). As it turns out, Olson — who also currently stars in "Hacks" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" — almost said no to the role, but her agent strong-armed her into at least considering it.

"It wasn't like a formal turning down," Olson told Esquire. "It's just my agent had to really make me sit down and read it. I had 'Sunny.' I was enjoying working part of the year and then being a mom the other part of the year." Olson then said she was hoping to develop her own project while also participating in projects like "Hacks" (where she plays the daughter of series co-lead Jean Smart and only appears in a handful of episodes). "So in my head, that was going to be a much different character from Dee, and I wanted to do a comedy/drama hybrid," Olson continued.

Not only that, but Olson was hoping for a snappy 10-episode streaming series so she could continue churning out (excellent) episodes of "It's Always Sunny" for FX. "So the idea of being on an hour-long drama on network television just wasn't appealing," Olson explained. "It took my agent saying, Okay, I understand that, but I'm not going to give up until you read it.' And he was right. I fell in love with the character." (Honestly, thank you to Olson's agent.)

That Esquire interview isn't the only time that Kaitlin Olson admitted that she very nearly said no to a series that's proving to be one of her biggest successes to date. During an appearance on "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" — the eponymous podcast led by former late-night host Conan O'Brien — Kaitlin Olson shared the same story, but with a few more amusing details.

"Drew Goddard wrote that script, and I was not interested when they came to me and wanted to have lunch," Olson shared, name-checking the show's creator Goddard (who also has worked on hits like "The Good Place"). "I was like, 'ABC hour-long drama? No, thank you!' And my agent was like, 'No, you're going to go have lunch with them.'"

Olson's explanation for her hesitation does make sense, though — she's been working on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" for years, and that show affords Olson and her co-stars and showrunners Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, and Rob Mac (the last of whom is Olson's husband) the complete freedom to do quite literally anything they want. (Literally. Howerton's character eats dog crap in season 17.) "I just had no interest in — first of all, working for a network. I am very spoiled on FX," Olson explained. "They let us do whatever we want and say whatever we want, and I have a hard time with executives who aren't creatives telling me what I can and can't do."

According to Olson, though, Goddard's writing got her firmly on board. "I was very gun-shy. And then I read [Goddard's] script and was like, 'Oh, I think I'm in,'" she concluded. 

As a fan of both "High Potential" and Kaitlin Olson, I'm pretty pleased that she said yes to the series, and apparently, a lot of other people feel the same way. To call "High Potential" a success for ABC is an understatement; in January of 2025, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the series led viewership stats for an incredible two weeks in a row, and The Wrap reported that shows like "High Potential" and "Tracker" were huge success stories from the 2024 fall network TV schedule ("High Potential" premiered in September of that year).

Generally, the reason for the show's success isn't a mystery for Morgan to solve — it's a clever, engrossing, and well-written show with a truly great actress as its anchor. Olson has her own explanation, though. As she said in the Esquire piece:

"A lot of people can relate to Morgan. It's nice to see a person who might seem very put together but is a bit of a mess. Someone who is a really good mom but a f*** up in real life. She doesn't take herself too seriously. She doesn't flaunt the fact that she's smart. It's disarming. She's just doing whatever she can to make it work and make sure her kids are good. Once you have kids, nothing else really matters. If they're happy, you're happy. That might have something to do with it."

Whatever the reason, people are tuning in to "High Potential," and if Olson wants to hang on to this job, it sure seems like it's hers for the foreseeable future. Whether you want to rewatch the entire series so far or need to finally see what all the fuss is about, "High Potential" is streaming on Hulu now.