How High Potential Star Kaitlin Olson 'Cheated' Her Way Though A Key Scene
"High Potential" hits the ground running in its first episode, with Kaitlin Olson's secret genius Morgan Gillory teaching the LAPD a thing or two about solving crimes while decked out in leopard print skirts and high heeled boots.
With her 160 IQ, Kaitlin Olson rattles off fact after fact at dizzying speeds to her LAPD partners while making it look easy. And Morgan's high IQ doesn't just help her solve crimes, it also allows her to calculate how much her groceries are going to cost down to the penny. But when the cashier rings up a different number, Morgan goes line by line through every coupon and discount they've got to prove her wrong.
Filming a scene like this is harder than it looks, and Olson admits she "fully cheated" to pull it off. "There are just tiny Post-it notes with numbers everywhere," she says in an interview with Esquire. "If you look closely, my eyes are looking at the ham to figure out what the next number is going to be. And I don't regret it for a second. No godd*** way I would've been able to memorize all those numbers. You can't improvise your way through math."
Olson makes it look easy as she rattles off facts and figures on High Potential
It's scenes like this made Olson's portrayal of Morgan so endearing from the show's very first episode, with TVLine critic Dave Nemetz saying that "seeing her run intellectual circles around a room full of veteran detectives without breaking a sweat is a fun, fizzy treat."
Morgan is a walking, talking encyclopedia, and even Olson herself is surprised that she's able to memorize all these long and complicated facts and figures every week. Although she does admit that "it's immediately gone from my memory about 20 minutes after we're done with the scene," joking that "there's just no room" her brain to retain all this information.
She has at least found a positive to this rigorous work: "I feel like I'm probably never going to develop dementia. You know how people do crossword puzzles to keep their brains active? There's no risk of Alzheimer's for me."
"High Potential" resumes its second season on Tuesday, Jan. 6, now airing at 9/8c.