#and also the next time the gang needs a lawyer Dennis is like I know a guy so they don’t have to use uncle jack anymore

[absolutely-not-my-main-blog]

I sincerely think if Dennis Reynolds and Jeff Winger were to makeout, it would benefit them both immensely, in fact, it’d be good for their health

[biofunmy]

Herrick Vs. Grindr Is A Section 230 Case That Could Change The Internet As We Know It

At the peak of the abuse Matthew Herrick suffered, 16 men showed up every day at his door, each one expecting either violent and degrading sex, drugs, or both. Herrick, a 32-year-old aspiring actor living in New York City, didn’t know any of them, but the men insisted they knew him — they’d just been chatting with him on the dating app Grindr. This scenario repeated itself more than 1,000 times between October 2016 and March 2017.

Herrick had deactivated his account and deleted the Grindr app from his phone in late 2015 when he’d started dating a man referred to in court documents as J.C., whom he’d met on the app. The two broke up in fall 2016. Soon after, according to court filings, J.C. began stalking Herrick and created fake profiles on Grindr impersonating Herrick and using screen names like “Raw Pig Bottom” and “Gang Bang Now!” The profiles falsely claimed Herrick was HIV-positive, interested in unprotected sex and bondage, and that he was “Looking for a group of hung tops to come over and destroy my ass.” Through Grindr, Herrick says J.C. directed these men to his apartment or workplace, creating a world of chaos for him on a daily basis.

“It was a horror film,” Herrick told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “It’s just like a constant Groundhog Day, but in the most horrible way you can imagine. It was like an episode of Black Mirror.”

Protective orders and police reports against J.C. failed to stop the torrent of harassment. Herrick, his friends, and lawyers submitted 100 complaints to Grindr asking it to block J.C., but they received no response. Eventually, Herrick took Grindr to court in an attempt to force it to do something to stop the nightmare. Grindr argued that under federal law, it didn’t have to help Herrick, and in February 2017, a federal judge agreed.

Now Herrick’s lawyers are arguing that the judge got it wrong. On Monday, they took their case before the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, whose decision could have far-reaching consequences on what apps and social media companies must do to combat harassment on their platforms. At the heart of the dispute is how much protection a 1996 law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — gives a website or app against liability for atrocious acts committed on its platform by users. It’s the law that protects Twitter from being sued for controversial tweets, and guards against Yelp being taken to court over negative restaurant reviews by users. But a growing coalition of consumer protection groups and advocates for victims of intimate partner violence say Section 230 gives companies an incentive to turn a blind eye to abuse.

The case represents a stark division between lawyers sounding an alarm over domestic abusers increasingly using smartphones and online services to track and harass their partners, and digital rights groups who fear the erosion of free speech online.

J.C. was arrested on Oct. 23, 2017, and has been charged with stalking, criminal impersonation, making a false police report, and disobeying a court order. J.C.’s next hearing was scheduled for Thursday. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held on a $500,000 bond.

“The whole thing is horrible,” said Judge Dennis Jacobs, one of three judges hearing Herrick’s appeal. “But the question is, what’s the responsibility of Grindr?”

Very little, according to the judge who ruled in Grindr’s favor in 2017. “I don’t find what Grindr did to be acceptable,” US District Court Judge Valerie E. Caproni said at the time. But under Section 230, she ruled, a dating app like Grindr couldn’t be sued because one of its users harassed someone through the platform.

“It’s just like a constant Groundhog Day, but in the most horrible way you can imagine. It was like an episode of Black Mirror.”

In court Monday, Tor Ekeland, one of Herrick’s lawyers, also questioned whether Grindr had continued to track Herrick’s location even after Herrick quit using the app.

“There are too many unanswered questions in this case,” Ekeland argued in a Manhattan courtroom packed with curious law students and supporters of Herrick. Grindr’s attorneys said it was “magical and implausible” that Herrick was tracked after leaving the app.

The appeals court didn’t say when it would issue a ruling. It’s the first time it has considered Section 230 on a case involving an app, let alone one based on geolocation technology, but Grindr’s lawyers say that doesn’t change things.

“The geolocation is a neutral system,” Daniel P. Waxman, one of Grindr’s attorneys, said in court Monday. “It’s open to good users and to bad users.”

Herrick’s lawyers say this case goes beyond Section 230 because Grindr knows it has put a dangerous product on the market with no means of filtering out bad actors, even when it knows someone like J.C. is abusing the platform. Grindr could hire more people to handle complaints, identify and ban serial harassers as Twitter has, or implement technology like Facebook is using to stop revenge porn, but has decided it’s cheaper to do nothing and hide behind Section 230 for protection, they say.

“It’s almost the cost of doing business for Grindr that there are going to be some people whose lives are going to be ruined by the product,” Carrie Goldberg, one of Herrick’s attorneys, told BuzzFeed News.

Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images

Grindr did not respond to repeated requests for comment from BuzzFeed News. In a court filing, the company stated it is a “safe space” for gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people to connect, and that to provide users with flexibility and discretion on their dating and sex lives, it asks for very little information and does not verify profiles. If someone wanted to, Grindr’s lawyer said in a 2017 court hearing, they could simply keep creating new profiles tied to different email addresses and the app likely would never catch them.

Grindr’s protection of user privacy has repeatedly been called into question. Last year, a BuzzFeed News report revealed that the app had been disclosing users’ HIV status — tied to their GPS data, phone ID, and email — to two external companies. Initially, Grindr said sharing the data was standard practice in the industry, but then announced it would stop doing it, “based on the reaction — a misunderstanding of technology — to allay people’s fears.” Herrick’s attorneys also pointed in court filings to another BuzzFeed News story noting that Grindr has in the past exposed the precise locations of users, and failed to implement the simple tweak needed to fix the problem.

Two other companies say they were able to halt the harassment that Grindr says it was unable to stop in Herrick’s case. Scruff and Jack’d, both location-based chat and dating apps catering to gay and bisexual men, told BuzzFeed News they were able to weed out and stop the abuse incited by Herrick’s ex on their platforms, though to protect trade secrets, neither would provide specifics.

For Grindr to call itself a “safe space” for the gay community, Herrick said, is a “facade.”

“They create this idea of who they are and who we as the gay community want them to be, but they were never that, and they will never be that,” Herrick told BuzzFeed News. “They always will just want to print more money.”

New York City is Grindr’s biggest market in the US, where some 426,000 users are located. Unlike dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble, which only have age- and gender-based filters, Grindr displays a grid of potential dates who can be narrowed by body type, sexuality, or type — clean-cut, geek, or jock, for instance — and their proximity at that moment to other users. Exhibits filed in court include screenshots of the fake profiles of Herrick showing him pinpointed to as close as 104 feet away from interested men.

Obtained by BuzzFeed News

Some of the men who showed up to meet Herrick would not leave once he told them there had been a mistake. Some followed Herrick into the prep kitchen or bathroom at the restaurant where he worked, while others waited outside his workplace or his Manhattan apartment for a half hour or longer. Six men arrived within a few minutes of each other one day. On multiple occasions, according to Herrick’s civil complaints, men appeared to be high on drugs, verbally berated Herrick as a “lying whore,” and had to be physically thrown out when Herrick told them to leave. J.C. handed out Herrick’s phone number too, once resulting in 75 text messages from different numbers in a 24-hour period, Herrick told BuzzFeed News.

Herrick was certain J.C. was behind it. He once witnessed J.C. across the street from his apartment watching the men come and go, Herrick told BuzzFeed News. Herrick said he also received text messages from J.C. noting what Herrick was doing at that moment. Herrick filed 14 police reports and obtained a protective order prohibiting J.C. from contacting him, according to the lawsuit, but it was impossible to prove J.C. was behind the online activity without Grindr’s cooperation, and the impersonation on Grindr continued.

Sadie Diaz, a lawyer for the nonprofit Sanctuary for Families, which helps victims of domestic violence, said Herrick wasn’t interested in taking down Grindr; he just wanted his life back. “There were up to 16 people showing up at his job and home every day, bothering his roommates, expecting sex, interfering with his work, interfering with his sleep,” said Diaz, who helped Herrick obtain protection orders. “He just wanted it to stop.”

On Jan. 27, 2017, a New York state judge issued an order requiring Grindr to search for and shut down the fake profiles. Until Herrick went to court, the only responses he received from Grindr were auto-replies acknowledging receipt of his complaints, according to his lawyers.

Grindr moved the case to federal court to fight it using Section 230, setting in motion Herrick’s lawsuit against the company.

“There were up to 16 people showing up at his job and home every day, bothering his roommates, expecting sex, interfering with his work, interfering with his sleep.”

Grindr said in court that it couldn’t stop J.C. without knowing which accounts were the impersonations of Herrick. Grindr’s lawyers suggested at one point that Herrick should ask the men approaching him to see their phones so he could flag the fake profiles, Goldberg told BuzzFeed News.

Some cyberlaw experts fear a ruling against Grindr will put the creativity of the internet as we know it at risk. They say that requiring platforms to more closely monitor users would give an advantage to tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google while hindering smaller startups with niche audiences, including Grindr. It would be more expensive to start new businesses online because of the cost of hiring watchdogs, said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“As bad as this [case] is, the principle behind Section 230 — which is, ‘let people be liable for their own speech’ — is the reason we are able to use the internet as this incredible platform for free speech and creativity today,” Granick told BuzzFeed News.

It would be a mistake to conflate a platform’s ethical duty — whether Grindr should have done more to take down harassing content after it was flagged — with whether the company should bear financial liability, said Lisa Hayes, general counsel for the nonprofit Center of Democracy and Technology.

“What we’re grappling with,” Hayes said, “is that the internet is now being used to showcase the worst of people. … But there’s a real risk to the internet economy if 230 is weakened.”

But the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which split from other digital rights groups and filed an amicus brief in support of Herrick, sees a different kind of privacy violation in this case — the unauthorized disclosure of Herrick’s address, phone number, and photos. Grindr might have had to dive deeper into personal data to identify and block Herrick’s harasser, but “if there’s immunity for platforms, then an individual cannot seek any recourse at all,” said Alan Butler, a lawyer for EPIC.

Once the case landed in federal court, news outlets started covering it, and Herrick said he soon began to see how many more people were in similar predicaments, seemingly without options.

“When this all started I got hundreds of emails and messages on Facebook and on Instagram,” Herrick said. “People who were telling me their own story, people who were asking me what they should do. I think it opened doors for people. For a long time, I would ask myself, I’m a 32-year-old man, how am I a victim of this, how is this happening to me? And in those words alone there is so much blame and embarrassment in it.”

Zachary Ares / BuzzFeed News

A majority of intimate partner violence cases now involve some form of harassment through technology, according to domestic abuse shelters and victims advocates. One recent survey of teens found victims of digital harassment are likely to be physically abused or experience sexual coercion.

Congress signed Section 230 into law with an expectation that tech companies will act morally responsibly when presented with abuse of their platforms, experts told BuzzFeed News. Diaz said clients of Sanctuary for Families have had similar experiences with impersonation on Facebook, for example, but they were able to work with the social media giant to address the problem.

“Some tech companies are doing the right thing and some are not,” Diaz said. “The problem with 230 is that the ones who are not have no profit motivation to take any action to prevent their platform from being used for abuse.”

The other two dating apps for gay, bisexual, and transgender men that assisted Herrick portrayed it as an easy call. Mark Girolamo, CEO of Jack’d, said, “we are happy that we were able to stop the harassment experienced by Mr. Herrick.”

Eric Silverberg, the cofounder and CEO of Scruff, said an algorithm deployed by the app looks for signals — for example, hypothetically, the quantity of messages sent from one account, certain words in a message, or the location of a profile — then weighs each of them and evaluates whether to take automated action or alert the team to investigate suspicious activity. The process of solving the problem in Herrick’s situation was “not a hard or sophisticated” one, he said.

“Once we were notified of this by the victim, we did an investigation, understood the pattern, and we permanently suspended the perpetrator and his device,” Silverberg told BuzzFeed News.

“If you’re a platform for strangers to meet, you have to apply some baseline of moderation or it will become abuse, as we’ve seen in this case,” Silverberg said. “People can be hurtful to one another, especially when love and romance is part of the equation, and it ends.”

“If you’re a platform for strangers to meet, you have to apply some baseline of moderation or it will become abuse.”

Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University professor who studies internet law, pointed out that it is never in Grindr’s business interest to ignore abuse on its platform, but that legally compelling Grindr to apply a tech solution might be an even more pernicious alternative. Grindr could end up over-censoring content or surveilling its platform more broadly, and “might end up distorting the marketplace in a way that ends up making us all worse off,” Goldman said. He called Herrick’s lawsuit “an easy Section 230 case.”

Waxman, Grindr’s lawyer, made a similar argument in court Monday, saying that the company didn’t create any of the content and that no one would be there if it weren’t for J.C.

Herrick moved to California a couple months after J.C. was indicted. Coming back for the oral argument in the appeals court was the first time he’d set foot in New York in a year. Even though J.C. is behind bars, Herrick still gets a weird feeling that he could be near. Little things sometimes startle him, like getting a text message from an unknown number.

“I have no idea how I made it through,” Herrick said, but by the time he had to decide whether to file an appeal, he had little hesitation.

“I have a vested interest in this now, not necessarily for myself, but for other people who don’t have a voice in all of this, who are suffering and don’t know what to do,” Herrick told BuzzFeed News. “We have an opportunity to really have people take a look at these laws and these companies and set a precedent that could finally make these companies take action.” ●

Sahred From Source link Business

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[kidsviral-blog]

The Funniest Woman In Hollywood Is In Search Of Her Next Big Role

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/the-funniest-woman-in-hollywood-is-in-search-of-her-next-big-role/

The Funniest Woman In Hollywood Is In Search Of Her Next Big Role

As Season 10 of It’s Always Sunny gears up, Olson looks ahead to what a life after Sweet Dee would be like. “Sometimes I’m like, Oh well, they just wanted a young pretty person, rather than a funny person.”

Kaitlin Olson is hating having her picture taken right now. The 39-year-old star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia doesn’t say this out loud, but it’s not hard to tell that she is deeply, deeply uncomfortable — though she’s nowhere near as awkward in her own skin as her character Sweet Dee, a caustic and narcissistic would-be thespian, on the FX (and now FXX) cult comedy. “Could you play a bit with the tree?” the photographer gently asks her.

It’s an unusually warm Friday afternoon, and Olson is standing in the backyard of her contemporary Sherman Oaks home. The lawn is sprawling, with a trampoline on one end and a pool at the other; toy cars and pint-sized seats, the cast-offs of her two young children, litter one corner. A stylist fixes Olson’s hair as she begrudgingly twists her fingers through the tree’s branches. “Just hanging out, touching my tree,” Olson says out loud, to no one in particular. “You like photo shoots? It’s pretty great, standing by yourself, taking photos.”

For a seasoned actor like Olson — who’s been working consistently for the past 15 years in comedy roles, turning up on Curb Your Enthusiasm as Becky, Cheryl’s loud and opinionated sister; as Mimi’s vengeful nemesis, Traylor, on The Drew Carey Show; and currently on New Girl as the free-spirited girlfriend of Jess’ dad — it’s surprising that she’s not used to the being the center of attention by now. But she’s decidedly not.

The truth is, though, that Olson feeling anxious about this interview and photo shoot is entirely understandable. She’s heading into a 10th season of Sunny, and while that’s a place any actor would envy being in, she’s also arriving at a crossroads in her career. As Sunny begins to wind down, Olson will soon be leaving a show on which she’s been a linchpin for 10 years, and will have to look around the corner to see what lies ahead for her career.

“Could you maybe relax your shoulders a bit more?” the photographer asks her, trying a different tack. “I don’t know,” Olson says, laughing at the word relaxed, “because I’m definitely not.”

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Photograph by Macey Foronda for BuzzFeed

The biggest role in Olson’s career to date remains the 10 years she’s spent on Sunny as Deandra “Sweet Dee” Reynolds, a horrifying example of a human whose self-centered streak is often a driving force in the storyline. Such as in the Season 8 episode “The Gang Gets Analyzed,” when Dee’s therapist calls her out for lying about being the first choice as the female lead in The Notebook, and the episode ends with Dee repeating, “Tell me I’m good,” until her therapist finally relents. Or in a third season installment, “Dennis and Dee’s Mom Is Dead,” when Dee hears from a lawyer that she won’t be getting any inheritance, because she was “a mistake” (despite being Dennis’ twin), and her knee-jerk reaction is to dig up the grave so she can steal the jewelry off her mother’s dead body. But rather than be repulsed by her character’s more detestable nature, Olson has been able to connect with Dee.

“I can’t tell if I relate to her anymore or if I’m just so used to playing her and love her so much that it’s second nature,” Olson says. With the photographer and stylists gone, Olson finally seems more at ease, sitting at a long wooden outdoor table in her backyard and tucking her legs into her chest. “There’s a certain element of desperation and wanting people to like you… I was really shy. But I think because that was so sad for me when I was little, that it’s so hilarious and sad now, that I relate to that. I like this character’s way of handling it, way more than how I handled it. Which is, like, aggressively and angrily. Maybe it’s cathartic. I don’t know.”

“I was really proud to make Larry [David] laugh. The more I would yell at him the more he would laugh.”

And Olson not only relates to the idea of needing to fit in, but it’s something that’s apparent just from talking to Olson. Often she’ll end sentences with “I don’t know,” like she’s trying to take back what she just said in case you don’t like it. Several times, she stops herself from answering a question with “I don’t know if I can answer that question. I don’t want you to print anything I have to say,” or “I don’t know how to answer that, again, without having it in print sound like I’m being a real arrogant asshole.” Refusing to answer tough questions about Hollywood and her role in it proves doubly problematic though, and she softens the blow by pointing at the recorder and saying, “I’ll tell you when your thing’s off.”

That need to be liked started long before Olson made it to Hollywood, and it’s what initially led her to start performing. Olson grew up in perhaps the most un-Hollywood setting — on a six-acre farm in Oregon. Olson says her mom would whistle when it was time for dinner, and if you wanted a snack, you just ate out of the garden.

“Nobody was an actor,” Olson says of her family. “I started doing summer camp stuff in elementary school and loved doing the plays. I liked making people laugh. I remember that specifically, being really young and having my parents being in the audience and laughing. It wasn’t really a Oh, I’m the center of attention feeling, it was more Oh, I’m making them so happy right now feeling. I liked that.”

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Olson — with Julie Payne, Cheryl Hines, and Paul Dooley — rails at Larry (Larry David) on Curb Your Enthusiasm HBO

That sense of accomplishment — of making someone happy — is what drove her to attend the University of Oregon and major in acting, and it’s what would eventually take her to Los Angeles to fully commit to her vocation. “I thought it was beautiful. It was so sunny. It’s so cloudy and gray and rainy in Oregon,” Olson says of moving to Los Angeles. “I didn’t understand how anyone could ever be sad or depressed here. It was so beautiful.”

She took classes at The Groundlings and eventually made it into the Sunday company. To support herself, Olson worked three jobs: as a recruiter for a biotech company; as a receptionist in a hair salon; and as a salesperson at a boutique shop. “I worked hard,” Olson says. That determination paid off when she landed an audition for Larry David’s HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. “I’m not the ballsiest person, so I was very proud of myself for getting it,” Olson says. “I was really proud to make Larry laugh. The more I would yell at him the more he would laugh. Which was really fantastic. I loved that.”

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Patrick McElhenney/©FXX / courtesy Everett Collection

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia originally started as a “writing exercise,” according to Rob McElhenney, who made a $200 homemade video pilot with Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton in an apartment. That pilot then sold to FX in 2005, and was given a budget of $400,000, less than a third of the cost of a traditional network comedy. It was shot with the caveat that they’d need to reframe the original storyline from being centered on three actors in Los Angeles to a group of friends who tend bar in Philly.

According to Howerton, one of the show’s executive producers, who also plays Sweet Dee’s twin brother, Dennis Reynolds, on the show, Olson came up against some stiff competition for the role of the hilariously vulnerable Dee; the final two actors considered were Olson and Kristen Wiig, according to Howerton, but in the end Olson landed it. (Wiig’s publicist did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“I knew her work from seeing her in Curb,” Howerton tells BuzzFeed News. “We wanted to find somebody who could be as funny as the guys, and we felt a lot of times in comedies, girls are so often relegated to the ‘oh, you guys’ role.”

Day, who fans know best as the ever-screaming and always emotionally unstable Charlie Kelly, echoes the sentiment that casting Olson was a no-brainer.

“We were blown away by how funny she was,” says Day. “I can’t think of an overall impression other than our general excitement that we found someone who was really right for this part.”

Oddly enough, it was McElhenney — to whom Olson is now married — who was less than convinced about her. During the audition, Olson accidentally left out a critical line in the script they’d given her, and McElhenney was nonplussed, to say the least.

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Howerton and Olson in an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia FX

“I left the room and Rob was like, How did she leave out the funniest line that was in there? and he didn’t want to cast me,” Olson says. “Rob, who I’ve now married, had to be talked into hiring me.”

The first time Olson and McElhenney met was during her audition, and despite any apprehension he had, she was cast as Dee, and the show premiered in 2005. Somewhere during filming Season 2, the pair started dating, though they wouldn’t officially come out as a couple until the show’s third season.

“Literally, the stupidest thing you can do in the entertainment industry is start dating your co-star on a television series that’s expected to continue,” McElhenney says in a phone interview. “Potentially, we could’ve ruined the dynamic of the TV series, but we jumped in anyway. I guess because I started to fall in love with her.” His voice softens as he says it.

They married in 2008 and have two sons, Axel (age four) and Leo (age two).

Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who plays The Waitress on Sunny and is married to Charlie Day in real life, first met Olson when they were on a flight to shoot the pilot. “The guys flew to Philly early, and I flew on a flight with Kaitlin,” Ellis explains. “We had a lot of cocktails together and were like, OK, you’re great, we’re going to be best friends.”

Ellis vividly remembers the moment when she found out Olson and McElhenney were dating. It was during a press junket, and they all sat down in a hotel room. “They were like, ‘We have something to tell you guys,’ and Kaitlin just starts crying and says, ‘I love him. I love him so much, you guys. He’s such a great person. We don’t want you guys to be mad at us because we’re dating and on the show,’” Ellis says, laughing. “It just made us laugh so hard, because it was such a funny way to reveal that they were dating for the first time. They’re just so great together.”

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Patrick McElhenney/FX

None of this would have happened if Olson had chosen not to take the role of Sweet Dee, which she considered in those early days.

The character was written as the typical straight man, which Olson had no interest in playing. “There were three episodes that were already written that I had to do that were just very like, ‘You guys. Come on, you guys. That’s stupid, you guys,’” Olson says. “But I was very clear about not wanting to do that.” (“I don’t think we did a great job writing her character the first season,” Howerton says.)

It speaks to Olson’s character that she wasn’t willing to just simply lay down and read the lines she was dealt; she took an active role in shaping the character and how she wanted to play Dee. “She pulled Rob aside, because he was the showrunner, and said she didn’t want to do the show if her character wasn’t funny,” Howerton says.

Olson only took the role after many conversations with McElhenney about how the character of Dee would be shaped. “He was like, ‘Look, we just don’t know how to write for a woman, but we’ll figure it out,’” Olson says. “And I was like, ‘Well then, don’t write for a woman. Just write — look at all these great funny characters you wrote. Just write one of those. I’ll make it female.’”

Despite initial character setbacks, the Dee of the past nine seasons is hilarious, and the most physically comedic role on the show. (Witness her free-form dance moves.) Dee’s actions don’t fall victim to the conventions usually dealt to women in comedy. Dee was Bridesmaids before there even was a Bridesmaids. She is crude beyond belief at times. She flails her arms and spits venomous, half-baked threats at anyone within earshot. She falls — a lot — and fake-vomits so convincingly that it’s become a running gag on the show. “I’ve never heard somebody do a gag so funny,” Howerton says. “You know, suppressing puke, it’s just a weird gift she has.”

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Olson runs head-first into a parked car on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia FX

In the second season episode “Charlie Gets Crippled,” Olson wears a back brace and hobbles on crutches as she drags her legs behind her. In “Who Pooped The Bed?” she runs out of a shoe store in stilettos and slams headfirst into a car so hard that there’s a dent, a stunt Olson performed without a stunt double.

“We had a stuntwoman do it, and it didn’t look very real, and then Kaitlin did it, and actually ran into the car, probably almost breaking her neck,” Day says with a laugh. “It’s just one of the funniest moments of physical comedy I think in the history of the show.”

Olson furrows her brows as she stares across the lawn. “I don’t want the stunt double to do it, unless it’s like a quick thing, because that’s part of the acting. I want to do that,” she says. “There’s a lot of acting that happens in between the running out and the head-hitting.”

The only problem is that Olson is extremely clumsy. “If there is a tack on the floor, she will step on it,” Howerton says. During the filming of Sunny, Olson has broken her back, her foot, her heel, and while on set, she fell through a floorboard and ripped her calf open on a metal spike.

“Our idea of Dee was not as physical as Kaitlin is,” McElhenney says. “It’s something we sort of found with the way she carries herself.”

Olson sighs. “I’m very long,” she says. “I’m very unaware of how long my limbs are and I bash into things a lot, and Rob makes fun of me a lot… I’ll do something and Rob will tell me to do it again and I didn’t even know it was funny.”

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Photograph by Macey Foronda for BuzzFeed

Olson is, as Howerton says, nothing like her Sweet Dee character, though fans of the show often have a hard time accepting that. “They assume I’m drunk and loud and that I want to do shots and stay up all night,” she says, laughing.

The home that Olson shares with McElhenney is immaculate, despite the fact that they have two children under the age of four. When her youngest, Leo, comes home from school, her entire face lights up and she wraps him in a warm hug before excusing herself to put him down for a nap. And an ideal Friday evening is one spent at home, according to both Olson and McElhenney. “A perfect night is coming home, having dinner, putting the kids to bed, and opening a bottle of wine and watching Game of Thrones,” McElhenney says.

Olson is often described by those who know her as nurturing and protective — “I think of her as a lioness,” McElhenney says. “She’s extremely protective of her children, like I fear oftentimes for my life if I cross a line. I’m afraid she’s going to snap my fucking neck. The way a female lion might with her cubs.” — very un-Dee qualities. She was “raised by hippies” in Oregon (McElhenney’s words) and cooks organic food, grows herbs in her garden, and uses homeopathic remedies.

“My motherhood life is sort of private … it’s so special to me I don’t want it attacked or to have that part be annoying to people.”

“She’ll pick something from the garden to heal a wound and it will magically disappear,” her friend and fellow actor Tricia O’Kelley (of Gilmore Girls and Devious Maids) says. Day: “In the 10 years that we’ve been doing [the show], I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get a cold. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

Her weakness is watching any of the Real Housewives shows, and she says that if she ever does get time to relax, she’ll check into a hotel nearby to “literally just order room service with a girlfriend and get massages and drink wine and watch Bravo.”

And because her private life is so starkly different from her television persona, she tends to keep it under wraps. “I feel like people only want to hear me say funny things. Like, I don’t tweet about my kids or being a mom ever, because I’m very aware that that’s annoying for people to hear,” Olson says. “So everything is true, but I just feel like my motherhood life is sort of private, because it’s so special to me I don’t want it attacked or to have that part be annoying to people.”

And everyone around Olson mentions how her role as a mother is an enormous part of her identity. “Motherhood has changed her a lot for sure, it’s by far her number one priority is those children,” O’Kelley says. “Everything else comes in a distant second. Her family as a whole — Rob, their marriage — her family is her priority.”

When asked what he sees as being next for Olson, her husband agrees that while her career is a priority, family will always come first for them. “She would love to build out a movie career and see what’s next in television,” McElhenney says. “But I do know the thing that’s most important to her now is to make sure these boys are raised well.”

Olson concurs. “Parenthood has become number one,” she says. “So I’ll only take something if it fits in, and if it doesn’t interfere with my ability to be a good mom. And that’s the truth and that’s how it will always be, because I feel that.”

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Photograph by Macey Foronda for BuzzFeed

Motherhood might be Olson’s priority at this point, but acting is a very real and large part of her world. “I would love to do more film,” she says at one point. “I really like TV, but yeah, in the interests of doing something different I would love to do more films.” She pulls at her silk shirt. “I’m not having any more babies. I want to work.”

In a year when Time named 2014 the “Best Year for Women Since the Dawn of Time,” it’s still a year where female-led comedy shows like Selfie, Super Fun Night, and Trophy Wife were canceled. And a year in which the most anticipated female-driven comedies — Tammy, Obvious Child, and They Came Together — made a very small dent in the film landscape. Obvious Child grossed just $3.1 million at the box office, and They Came Together grossed under $1 million. While Tammy was a financial success, making close to $100 million at the box office, if you compare that to male-driven buddy comedies like 22 Jump Street (which grossed close to $200 million), there seems to be a disconnect between what Hollywood is offering and what Americans are seeing.

“Look, I’m never going to understand what Middle America wants, because I’m on a show that Middle America doesn’t necessarily like, but I think is really funny,” Olson says, wrapping her arms across her chest. “I think there’s definitely a shift, and no one’s funnier than Melissa McCarthy and she’s doing really well, you know, so hopefully.”

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Sasha Roiz and Olson on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia FX

Whether or not middle America likes Sunny or Olson, there does seem to be a shift happening. Ellen DeGeneres hosting the 2014 Oscars led to an 8% increase in viewership, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have hosted the Golden Globes for the past three years, but is that enough? “For sure, there’s not enough funny roles for women in Hollywood, period,” Howerton says. “I’m happy to say that we personally — in Sunny and other things that we’re working on and have written — always try to make it a priority to write funny female roles.”

Even if what Olson and Howerton say is true — that Middle America doesn’t like the kind of comedy Olson wants to do, and there aren’t enough comedic roles for women in general — what does that mean for Olson as she leaves Sunny to explore other roles? Where do you go when the film and television landscape isn’t in your favor?

Olson doesn’t seem entirely sure, other than that she’d like to try out a character who isn’t quite so heightened and extreme as Dee. “I don’t know that I want to do something super dramatic. Our show and our characters are so heightened; I would like to do a more realistic person, who’s going through something really hard, but deals with it in a humorous way,” she says. But at the moment, those aren’t the parts she’s being offered.

“What I get a lot of is ‘We know you can make this funny.’ Stuff that’s like, it’s OK, but then I’m supposed to make it funny,” Olson says. “It’s a great compliment… But I don’t know if I’m interested in taking something that’s OK and being the one that’s responsible for making it funny.”

“I think a lot of men are scared to act opposite a woman who is as funny as they are.”

When asked why she thinks she hasn’t been offered more roles at this point, Olson says, “Sometimes I’m like, oh well, they just wanted a young pretty person, rather than a funny person. That’s discouraging, because there’s nothing I can do about that.” Olson pauses, and then softens the blow with, “I love my job. I got really lucky. I love my character and this circumstance, but it is a little confusing why, in my off time, I’m not doing more. I can’t really blame it on ‘oh well, I’m pregnant’ anymore.”

The actors who have worked with Olson know what she’s capable of, and vehemently speak of her potential. “I’m pissed off at the world that she’s not a giant movie star,” Ellis says of Olson. “I just think she has so much to offer: She’s a great comedian but she’s also a great actress.”

For his part Howerton offered his own take. “I just think it’s a shame that she hasn’t been more recognized, and that more roles have not been thrown at her. I think a lot of men are scared to act opposite a woman who is as funny as they are, and who will give them a run for their money for being the funniest person in that project,” he says. “And I think a lot of times she doesn’t get cast in things because she’s so funny, and I think that’s fucked up.”

When asked if this was at all true, Olson appears hesitant to answer and seems borderline uncomfortable. She pauses before responding. “I hope not, but I feel like that’s happened a few times. I just hope that, if it is true, it starts to shift soon. Because it’s a shame. I don’t know if I can answer that question. I don’t want you to print anything I have to say.”

After a long pause — where she leans across the table, then sits back and re-tucks her legs into her chest — she says, “Yeah, I just, I love Glenn for saying that and for recognizing it, and, well, you know, Rob says all the time, he’s like, ‘Look. That must not be what America wants because if it were, you’d see more of it.’ People, women, want to see women being pleasant. But for some reason, we want to see men be really funny. I think that’s starting to change, you know, ever since Bridesmaids really. So that’s really awesome. I think that’s the part that I’ll focus on and just hang in there.”

During a time where Olson does have to consider and weigh every word she says, because those words could lead to her next big role or prevent her from landing it, it’s clear that she’s nervous about it all — about posing with the tree, how she’ll be perceived by viewers, and what people think of her, and wanting to be liked by an audience larger than the one she’s cultivated with Sunny. “I hope it’s not threatening for me to be as funny as I can be and work with a really funny man,” she says emphatically, straightening her posture and finally relaxing. “To me, that sounds like an amazing movie.”

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/kaitlin-olson-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia