He was the co-creator and executive producer of the HBO series Big Love and Getting On along with his writing partner and husband Will Scheffer.
In 2007, Olsen and Scheffer won a TV Writers Guild of America Award for the pilot episode of Big Love.
Olsen is openly gay; since the early 1990s, he and professional partner Will Scheffer have also been married to each other.
[2][3] Prior to the television show Big Love, Olsen co-produced the independent feature-length movie Easter (2002), which was originally written as a play by Scheffer.
Olsen also wrote a six-part miniseries for HBO known as Mary Chestnut's Civil War.