Olson somehow managed to piss McElhenney off before the two even worked together. During her audition, she shared that she read with Charlie Day before being asked to improvise. “I let go of the already funny stuff and concentrated on leveling up the rest of the material,” Olson recalled. “After, I called my manager and said, ‘The audition was great. I want this job. But I’m so pissed that I left out the funniest line that was already in there, because I was so focused on just making everything bounce better.'”
That line, as it turns out, was written by McElhenney, who wasn’t thrilled to see his contribution left on the cutting room floor. “So she leaves the room, we’re no doubt 100% thinking she was awesome… But I don’t know if her instincts were 100% right, because she left out the funniest line,” he said. “Now, is it a coincidence that I happened to write that line? I was 26 years old, and probably very precious with what I was writing.”
Eventually he got over it, and Olson was offered the part—which she turned down. Apparently, the lines she had read in her audition weren’t meant for Dee but one of the other guys. “I was shocked, because they didn’t have anything funny for Sweet Dee,” Olson recalled. In the early days, the character was a bit of a nag; that was before she went on to transform into a bird or ruin poor Rickety Cricket‘s life.
It was McElhenney who convinced her the good stuff was coming. He apparently explained that the show just didn’t have the budget for rewrites at the time, but promised the character would get worse (and therefore better) with time. Olson decided to trust him and take the job, and they’ve been terrorizing the civilians of Philadelphia (including the Abbott Elementary crew) ever since.
