The Choreographers Behind ‘Mac Finds His Pride’ Break Down the Iconic Dance Number and Rob McElhenney’s Dedication to Making It Perfect

To start, I’d love to hear how you came to work on this episode. 

Alison Faulk: A season or two before, I choreographed an episode of Sunny, and during that episode, Rob and I were chatting and we discovered we had a bunch of mutual friends. So when this came around, he knew he wanted to dance during the season, and he knew, in this episode in particular, he wanted it to be the way he came out to his father. He reached out, and we started chatting and trying to figure it out.

I showed him a bunch of different kinds of dance and the one thing I suggested — as a person who had never danced before and who wanted to do this for real and not as a joke — was that it might benefit him to have a partner because it would just elevate things. That ended up working out really great with the story. When we knew it was going to be a partner dance, I hit up Leo Moctezuma because Leo and I have choreographed a ton of partnering stuff together through the years.

When Rob McElhenney came to you, how did he describe what he wanted?

Faulk: The thing he was very clear with us about is he didn’t want it to be a joke. He wanted it to be serious. He knew that it was going to be so meaningful for so many people, and he had this entire audience that had been on this journey with him all these years. He really wanted to do right by the audience and by the character. He wanted to make sure that the character had an actual, real, heartfelt moment. It was so important to Rob and also to Mac. It was also important to Rob and his family — his sister and his mother and his brother are queer — and he really wanted to be very clear that he was not making a joke out of it. This was a genuine, real expression of how he was feeling.

The dance was kind of a visual of wrestling with yourself to get to this place. That’s what Kylie Shea, his partner, represented. She represented the duality of him. She was him at the same time as being this angelic, motherly figure. It was a dual purpose for her. He wanted to make sure that he gave the audience a real moment to feel and be invested in this as opposed to it being a comedic bit. The bit, to him, was that it wasn’t a bit. That was the throughline the whole time: It was important for him to give Mac this moment because that’s not typically what Mac would do on the show.

Leo, what was it like when you were asked to come onto the project?

Leo Moctezuma: I was so excited when Alison called me because I’m a fan of the show. And yeah, it’s a beautiful, strong moment. But I was mostly excited that Rob really wanted to learn. A lot of times on jobs, especially with TV and film, you only have three days with the actor because they’re really busy, but they need to look like a dancer and you have to make them look good. With me and Alison specifically, we take our craft seriously. Dancers are athletes. So, the fact that he wanted to learn and was hungry for it and wanted to train was really exciting for me. How long did we work with him, Alison, was it three or four months?

Faulk: Yeah, three or four months. He came over to my house. I have a little dance studio in the garage, and he came here three to four times a week for two hours a pop. He’d come from set and train. And then, on top of it, he had a body transformation as well. “Committed” is an understatement.

Moctezuma: His dedication was incredible. He’d send us clips of things like, “Oh my God, I just saw this. Can we do something like this?” He had great ideas.

When you got started, what was the process?

Faulk: When we thought we were going in the direction of partnering, we were like, “Well, let’s just see how you take to it.” He had some natural ability to lift me in a dancer way. We’d demonstrate, and he’d replicate it pretty well. So, he had some natural understanding of it. Then Leo and I did a draft of the number where we choreographed everything fully, and we started teaching it to him and he was learning it. And as he got vocabulary in his head and understood the story and understood what he was capable of, he started being curious and watching things. He was like, “Oh, could we do a thing where she puts her leg up really high?”

For a song about Mac coming out, why was it decided to partner him with a woman?

Faulk: She represented another side of him, inside. So, essentially, it’s him. She was that angelic mother figure and gave that feminine support of, “You can do it. Pull yourself up, you’re going to be okay.” It was just a beautiful thing to look at as well. It was a beautiful image.

Why do it in water?

Faulk: We did another show where we did a dance in water, and Rob was really excited by that. For this story, it ended up so great because it represented the struggle that this man has been going through to admit to his friends and to the world how he wants to be. Having that rain and that ominous feeling and that struggle throughout, and then, the sunshine at the end, it was just a beautiful way to explain his narrative.

Is there any specific symbolism that you want to single out from the piece?

Faulk: There was one moment in particular that felt a bit heavy. He was lifting her and holding her. That was something that he was dealing with — the heaviness of his emotions. Then there was a moment where he held onto Kylie and swung her around. She flew across in the water and ended up in this heap on the ground, and she was very defeated. He went over to her and she picked herself back up, and she did this incredible développé. That was that moment of, “I want to give up, but I’m not going to give up.” So they were lifting each other up — essentially lifting yourself up to move on — and it was going to be okay. That was, to me, the biggest symbolic moment.

Moctezuma: I mean, the LGBTQ+ story, in general, is wanting that acceptance and is going through a lot of struggle, a lot of self-doubt, a lot of trauma. And that choreography is very, very difficult even without water. We, as LGBTQ, have to grip the floor and find our surroundings and find our tribe and find our people. That’s what it was. It’s just the fight — our inner fight and for acceptance.

What was it like for you when you saw it all put together?

Faulk: Because Rob’s so cool, he let us in the edit room. We sat with him and Todd, the director, as well. They wanted to capture the actual dance aspect of it in a really great way. Still, when we saw the piece in its entirety, I was emotional.

How about the way people responded to it?

Faulk: People reached out, not just like, “Hey, that was great” — I’d have people reach out and DM me these long messages. I’ve seen tattoos of the part where she puts her leg up and they’re holding hands. It struck a chord with people, and you feel really lucky to be a part of something like that that resonates with people in a strong way.

Moctezuma: It was mind-blowing. I’m one of those people who likes to read through comments, and there were so many stories and DMs that I’ve gotten saying, “Thank you for creating this, it was so powerful,” and “It helped me through this thing that I was going through.” It gives me chills just to think about.