‘Sunny’ future for actress Kaitlin Olson

IF YOU WATCH

What: “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”

Where: FXX

When: Wednesday, 10 p.m.

By Jay Bobbin

Gracenote

Though her series “The Mick” is over, the outlook for Kaitlin Olson is still sunny.

The comedic actress and her longtime cohorts on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” – her real-life husband Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Danny DeVito – launch that show’s 13th season Wednesday, Sept. 5, on FXX. Though not a full-time regular now, Glenn Howerton (“A.P. Bio”) still is part of the show’s gang, with the first new episode making use of a life-size doll that resembles him. Other stories involve an escape room and the unexpected, highly choreographed way Mac (McElhenney) informs his convict father about a major life realization.

“It’s Always Sunny” has been absent for a year-and-a-half, but it already has a Season 14 renewal, which will tie it with “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” as television’s longest-running live-action sitcom. “I’m so deeply grateful for it,” Olson says of the series. “It really allows me to go and do other things. I can always come back to ‘Sunny,’ where I know I will be really happy with what we are doing as a show. It was just so much fun to come back and play Sweet Dee after taking a year off.”

Olson credits “Sunny’s” longevity to the fact that “we only do 10 episodes a season, so we’re able to make 10 great episodes of television. If you’re forced to make 23, you’re going to get some stinkers in there. And then, because we took a year off, everybody came back to the writers’ room really fresh and was excited to get going.”

Noting she was “really proud of what I did” on “The Mick,” Olson also has another potential series in the works, a Fox comedy co-created by McElhenney and teaming her with Leah Remini as spouses raising the sons of one of them. “I had a million reasons why I didn’t want to do it,” Olson allows, “but ultimately, I’m very excited to play a very different character. The multicam sitcom has always scared me a little bit, but I feel like we can do something really special with it.”