The Mick type TV Show

Every week, the cast and crew of Fox’s The Mick — the new comedy series that follows Kaitlin Olson’s reckless Mackenzie, a.k.a. “Mickey,” who’s tasked with caring for her on-the-lam sister’s three children — is taking EW behind the scenes of the latest episode. This week, star and producer Kaitlin Olson takes us inside the 11th episode, “The New Girl,” where Ben (Jack Stanton) begins cross-dressing and tries out an all-girls school.

We obviously didn’t know it would be airing at the perfect time, but I’m really happy it worked out that way. Ultimately, we’re always just wanting to do something funny, but we thought it would be great if we were trying to get Ben into a school that was much closer so I didn’t have to drive him around, and we decided to make it an all-girls school. We thought it would be great if we had a character who is a little boy who likes wearing girls’ clothes and he doesn’t really know what that means and we don’t really know what that means and ultimately it doesn’t matter. He should just be who he is.

Ben’s not transgender — and that’s part of the conversation. He’s still a little boy, he just likes to wear girls’ clothes sometimes. Maybe it’s because he misses his mom and that’s why he’s wearing some of her clothes, but maybe it’s just because he feels more comfortable. What we talked about with [Jack Stanton, who plays Ben] was mainly that this kid just wants to try this out. Kids are simple. They’re much more accepting than adults are. He’s like, “Why am I wearing a girls’ shirt?” I’m like, “Because Ben wants to wear a girls’ shirt.” He’s like, “Okay, cool!”

I have so much fun with this character and it’s so fun to play her as someone who just does not care about anything. I really relish the tiny moments where you see that Mickey does care, and it’s easiest to have that happen when it’s dealing with Ben because he’s just so sweet. That’s really the main difference between my Sweet Dee character on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and this character: Dee will never grow and will never change and Mickey will sort of fall in love with this family despite herself. She’ll still find it a giant pain in the ass, but there’s a little bit of heart with this character, which is fun to play.

It’s a really fun episode and I’m happy that it’s airing right now and I hope that it gives a little bit of insight to sensitivity to kids who are trying to figure things out.

The Mick airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox.

—As told to Ariana Bacle