As moms we are always hoping to teach and inspire our children through the everyday things that we do. So when I recently interviewed, Finding Dory Star and mother of two, Kaitlin Olson, I was so interested to hear about how she was able to share her experience working on the movie, and parenting her two boys in such a positive way.
Finding Dory, opening nationwide June 17th, is the long awaited sequel to one of my all time favorite Disney and Pixar films, ‘Finding Nemo’. In this movie Dory, remembers that she has parents and wants to be reunited with them. She sets out to find them along with Marlin and Nemo, but ends up separated and taken to a Marine Institute where she meets up with her childhood friend, Destiny (played by Kaitlin Olson). Destiny is a whale shark, who is a little clumsy due to her poor eyesight. However she has a lot of heart and proves that you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect friend.
“I was really excited to do a kids’ movie”
Kaitlin says that even before she knew which character she would be playing, she was excited to work on this film because of her desire to share the family friendly film with her own kids. She says, ” I’m on a show that’s for adults, you know, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is not something we let our children watch.” She continues, “So I was really excited to do a kids’ movie…I wanted to do something they could watch.”
She shared that she was able to take her two boys to the premiere of ‘Finding Dory’ and what a great experience it was to be able to take them to a movie that the whole family could enjoy together. She said, “All the Pixar movies now, they really relate to adults and children, it’s a movie that you want to see.”
She also shared how the message of her character, Destiny, helped her to teach a valuable lesson for a challenge that she is working through. She says that one of the messages of her character is “Nobody has a perfect life, nobody is perfect, and that’s okay.”
“You don’t have to be perfect.”
She shared “I’m specifically dealing with that with one of my sons who’s just a perfectionist… he gets so so so upset, I mean even the Legos will fall apart and it really is the end of the world, and he feels personally like he is a terrible person. So that’s a message in this movie that really resonates for me personally- it’s you don’t have to be perfect…there’s no such thing.”
Kaitlin shares that this movie has given her a platform to open up this discussion with her son, and help him to learn from the lessons of whale shark, Destiny. She says, ” I’m using that as a tool to talk to him about that stuff, which is just so great, this is such a good nice movie and it’s really helping me with my parenting.”
A few other things that Kaitlin says has helped her in parenting are making her kids her number one priority, staying close to them even when working, and throwing in a good dose of humor.
“I can be a total goofball!”
She says, “As long as I can be a total goofball and they think I’m a goofy idiot, I’m perfectly happy with that.”
For a fun family friendly film with a lot of heart, humor and teachable moments, be sure to check out Finding Dory in theaters June 17th. You can check out my interview with Ellen Degeneres and Ed O’Neill, too!
I received an all expense paid trip, for the purposes of scoping out Finding Dory. All opinions are my own.
Interview photo credit to Sara Lundberg / BudgetSavvyDiva.com.
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