Kaitlin Olson on the ‘Hacks’ Finale and Losing Her Father

His lungs turned fibrotic and what followed was, in Olson’s words, “a long, slow, miserable event.” Doctors intubated and sedated him for two weeks while Olson stayed by his side with her mother and brother. When it became clear he’d be in the ICU indefinitely, she began flying back and forth between Oregon and her Los Angeles sets. Olson says she couldn’t stop apologizing to a Hacks production that kept rearranging its schedule around an actor who wasn’t exactly the lead character. “Everyone over at Hacks was so incredibly flexible and kind and understanding,” she says. “This is a gigantic nuisance, and I’m a guest star on their show.”

Eventually, the first day on the Hacks set arrived, and she arrived on set at 5 a.m. for hair and makeup. Then, her phone rang. Her dad had lost consciousness. “Honestly, at this point, it’s a blur,” Olson says. “I collapsed in the line producer’s arms. I said, ‘I have to go.’ And he said, ‘Go.’”

Don, who had moved to a rehab center, had contracted pneumonia, slipped into a coma, and was in an ambulance headed to the emergency room. “Shutting down a production like that is devastating,” says Olson. “I’ll forever be grateful to them for their grace around that.”

Eventually, he stabilized. The doctors told her there would be no real recovery, and that his lungs would never again work on their own. But her parents encouraged her to go back to work. “I’m trying to digest that information and shoot a comedy,” she says. “I’d have to stop and take phone calls and wipe away tears and come back and then try and be funny. And it felt so weird. I felt guilty, because I was legitimately having fun. That was confusing.”

Downs describes Olson as “completely fearless,” and says for the episode she had to get into a pen with untrained goats. “When a goat would knock her over she would use it—she’d incorporate it into the scene seamlessly, never breaking character,” he says. “She is so committed to comedy she will do anything for the work, no matter how punishing or how insane and it’s a marvel to watch. She’s like a modern day Lucille Ball.”

Olson and Smart texted Don, a big fan of Hacks, videos from set throughout the shoot. “He especially loved me screaming at people—we’re just not yellers in real life,” she says. “So every scene I was doing, I was like, ‘Oh God, he is going to think this is so funny.’”

That episode of Hacks—which includes DJ refusing to accept failure in learning a clown routine—would end up being the last episode of anything Olson made that Don watched before he died. “And he loved it,” she says. “It’s just always going to be very special to me, because he got to see it.”