By Gina Sirico OTRC
Just when you thought “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” couldn’t get any wilder, here comes season 17!
On The Red Carpet spoke with the cast – Rob Mac (formerly McElhenney), Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson and Danny DeVito – at the Paley Center’s special screening and conversation to mark the show’s 20th anniversary.
“It’s a high-octane season, you know? I think it’s one of our strongest in years,” said Day. “It felt like old times again in the writers’ room. So the chemistry was good, and the jokes were flying, and I think the season’s really strong.”
Howerton echoed the praise for the team of writers they assembled.
“We really pushed hard to try to get us all back in a room together for this particular season,” he said. “It’s important for us to be able to kind of say anything, you know, and say the most outrageous thing.”
Some of the most outrageous moments in the series come with the crossover episodes, one that everyone knew about and the other that no one saw coming.
“I personally have loved the idea that everybody thought that the crossover that we were talking about was Abbott Elementary, which is very much true. But one thing we were able to keep a secret was that the real crossover is The Golden Bachelor,” Mac said.
That episode features the Bachelor mansion and Jesse Palmer as host, trying to make sense of DeVito’s Frank Reynolds as the Golden Bachelor.
“We were very clear that we were not making fun of him. We were not making fun of the show. We wanted to take it very seriously and actually put Frank Reynolds into that role as the Golden Bachelor and see what happens,” Mac added.
“I mean can you imagine doing it, for real?,” DeVito said. “It’d be like so exciting, you know, to have a bunch of women to choose from. I mean what? You know, Frank, I jumped at the chance to do that. I mean that was a good thing.”
“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American TV history. DeVito credits the cast chemistry.
“Right from the moment I met the boys, Charlie and Glenn and Rob and then Kaitlin, I knew. I’ve been around for a long time. So I understand what makes it right,” he said. “There’s passion, there’s generosity, there’s camaraderie, there’s inclusion there’s exploration – all these things that mean so much to actors.”
Mac and Olson met, fell in love, got married and had a family over the course of the 20 years since the show premiered.
“I remember being in like, season four or five and someone asking (Mac) on a carpet like, ‘did you ever think it would go this many seasons?’ And Rob being like, ‘yeah of course I did,’ which I loved. And I was like ‘yeah I kind of did too,'” Olson said. “17 seasons, 20 years, I don’t know that any of us really imagined that,” said Olson. “Now I’m ready. I didn’t know I was signing up for a lifetime commitment.”
“With the marriage, you did,” Mac responded.
“With the marriage I did. Let’s be clear, that’s still there!,” Olson added.
Also there for Olson? Keeping her name. Rob recently filed paperwork to change his last name from McElhenney to Mac, so we wondered if she would follow suit.
“It’s on the driver’s license, it’s on the passport. But I go by Olson, so I don’t really have to worry about it.”
Mac told On The Red Carpet he’d been thinking about switching up his name for quite some time.
“It really didn’t solidify for me until I did a family tree and realized that it had been changed six or seven times in the last 50, 60 years, or at least since we immigrated into this country in 1884, in which the…government agent just decided that our name was spelled differently. And once I saw that, I thought, Well, maybe we can play with it a little bit,” he explained.
The name may have changed, but Mac’s love for this series – and everything that comes with it – remains the same. He and Olson invested in a bar called Mac’s Tavern in Philadelphia (named after his “Sunny” character), which just recently closed its doors after a fifteen year run.
“My son, who’s about to turn 15, we were talking about how he has no experience of this. We went back and looked at the opening night. And the opening night, Kaitlin was nine-and-a-half-months pregnant with our oldest child,” Mac said.
“The air conditioning went out at the opening night party, it was absolutely packed, I was almost ten months pregnant, I was dripping sweat. I kept making trips to the basement because I think there was a fan down there,” Olson added. “But what a wonderful place, what a wonderful city and we’re honored to have had 15 great years there.”
“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” premieres July 9 on FXX and streams the next day on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
The Walt Disney Company is the parent compan of FXX, Hulu and this ABC station.