Forecasting his SECOND ACT
As ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ sets TV record, star and creator McElhenney looks for what’s next
The past year in California has been the driest in a century. But on a recent mid-November afternoon, California was starting to look a lot like … Ireland.
At least it was in the edit bay for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” where visual effects artists were tweaking the color scheme to better resemble that of the Emerald Isle. Several episodes of the new season are set in Ireland, where they were supposed to be shot before the pandemic intervened. That meant adding a lot of green and gray in post.
Rob McElhenney jumped up from the couch. He poked the screen with a decisive finger. “Can we make the mountain closer to a darker rock?” He sat down, then jumped up again. “Can we darken the sky?” Then again. “Is that enough of a pinnacle?”
A big sigh. A pause. “I love this job,” he said.
Off-screen, McElhenney, who created and stars in “Sunny,” is in the midst of his own transformation, and it’s a lot harder when what you’re poking at is yourself. When the show recently returned to FXX for its 15th season, it officially dethroned “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” as the longest running live-action comedy series in American TV history, and it has already been renewed through season 18.
For McElhenney, it’s a milestone. But it’s also a midpoint, and a cause for reflection. He is embarking on what he calls “the second half ” of his career. Thanks largely to the longevity of “Sunny,” he is financially set for life — he doesn’t really need to do anything more. And yet, in the past two years, he has co-created and stars in the Apple TV+ comedy “Mythic Quest”; co-developed and sold a third, to-be-announced scripted show; recorded a “Sunny” recap podcast; and is now filming the docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham,” which will chart his journey as the new co-owner of a Welsh soccer team.
“I’m only 44,” he said. “So, am I going to sit back and just wait to die?”
Those who know McElhenney know complacency was never an option. They describe him as “the most driven man I’ve ever met” (“Sunny” executive producer and star Charlie Day); “the captain that you want on your ship” (his “Sunny” co-star and wife of 13 years, Kaitlin Olson); and “the ‘Rocky’ soundtrack in human form” (Megan Ganz, who created “Mythic Quest” with McElhenney and Day and is also an executive producer on “Sunny”).
The McElhenney origin story he tells is a hero’s journey built in the grand tradition of the American dream: An outsider from a working-class Philadelphia family defies the odds to charm the Hollywood suits and achieve huge success with his buddies by his side.
Acting was initially a last resort. Small and not athletic but longing deeply for connection, the teenage McElhenney eventually abandoned his attempts to play a sport at his all-boys Catholic high school and answered the siren song of a nearby sister school, which needed boys for its production of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”
After a brief stint at Temple University, he moved to New York and then Los Angeles to pursue acting.
The idea for one of TV’s most successful comedies was born modestly enough, coming to McElhenney in the middle of the night in 2004. He envisaged a scene in which a guy knocks on his friend’s door to ask for some sugar for his coffee. The friend tells him he has cancer. The first guy is really sorry to hear that — but he still needs the sugar.
As McElhenney put it, if the “maxim” of “Friends” was “I’ll be there for you,” then the one for “Sunny” would be “I’ll never be there.”
McElhenney approached his fellow aspiring actors Day, Glenn Howerton and Jordan Reid (then McElhenney’s girlfriend) with a script, and they shot the original pilot for “Sunny” on a hand-held camcorder. They shopped it around and, according to McElhenney, the fledgling FX offered the best chance for the team to retain creative control and to do the low-budget show their way.
FX paid them to shoot a more polished pilot and suggested it might have a better chance of standing out if they changed the characters from a group of selfinvolved actors in Los Angeles to a group of self-involved bar owners in McElhenney’s native Philadelphia.
As McElhenney, Howerton and Day waited to hear if the show would be picked up, FX came back with a question: Would they be willing to hire a different actor for the sole female lead, Sweet Dee?
The guys agreed to find someone else, and Reid, who by then had split with McElhenney, was bumped, an experience she described in a 2016 essay for Observer as feeling like a betrayal by her friends. (Reid no longer begrudges the men for seizing their opportunity, she wrote in an email, and she and
As McElhenney put it, if the “maxim” of “Friends” was “I’ll be there for you,” then the one for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” would be “I’ll never be there.”
McElhenney each now say that they are once again friends.) Olson auditioned and won the part.
Sixteen years after its debut, “Sunny” remains resolutely committed to its brand of crass nihilism in an age of kinder, gentler comedies like “Ted Lasso” and “Schitt’s Creek.” But while “Sunny” remains intent on “satirizing ignorance,” as McElhenney put it, he also admits there have been missteps, like the treatment of a recurring transgender character, who was referred to as a slur in a way that made it seem as if the show, rather than the characters, was advocating her mistreatment.
“We can’t retroactively change things,” he said. “What we’ve done is adjust for them.”
Women and people of color have increasingly been added to the “Sunny” fold, a course McElhenney continued when staffing and casting “Mythic Quest.”
Beyond McElhenney’s diversification efforts, Ganz said he has also worked hard to offer guidance and opportunities for people who perhaps didn’t have as clear of a path forward in the industry as he did.
As earnest as McElhenney is about the generous aspect of his second act — using his own success to create security and opportunity for others — he is aware that he’s partly motivated by self-interest. By elevating new talent around him, he is making his own projects better. It also makes him feel good.
“Am I doing it all in the service of something positive or good? I’d like to say that the answer is yes,” he said. “But sometimes, if I’m being honest with myself, maybe it is just that I don’t know what it is I’m looking for. Maybe when I find it, I’ll know.”