Rob McElhenney Claimed the Cast of ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Were Actually Drunk During Some Early Season Scenes
Drinking at work is usually a strong indicator of alcoholism, but what does it mean if being an alcoholic is actually your job?
Whenever you’re watching any episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you can safely assume that the characters onscreen are supposed to be drunk, or, at the very least buzzed, based on what happened the one time they stopped drinking. As “The Gang Gets Quarantined” established, if Mac, Dennis, Charlie, Dee or (probably) Frank ever cease the constant stream of alcohol going straight into their veins, they develop flu-like systems and suffer a withdrawal so severe that it puts them on death’s doorstep.
Thankfully, Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson and Charlie Day don’t need to swallow half a cap of Listerine to stave off the shakes when they’re busy filming Always Sunny — at least, they don’t anymore. Back in 2013, McElhenney did a Reddit AMA where a fan asked him whether he and his co-stars ever actually get drunk on set when their characters are supposed to be tanked, and, surprisingly, McElhenney admitted that real drinking was a recurring strategy for getting into character during the show’s early seasons.
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Hopefully they didn’t go the method route when Dennis and Dee got hooked on crack.
When asked by a fan if he and his co-stars ever got drunk for real during filming, McElhenney wrote, “Yes. But not often. Earlier seasons more often.” The Always Sunny star and co-creator then added, “I’ll tell you what, you name a scene and I’ll tell you if I was drunk,” before responding to exactly zero inquiries about specific episodes.
As many fans pointed out at the time, McElhenney’s confirmation of on-set drinking seemed to contradict a previous statement made by Howerton during his own AMA, when he answered a similar question with the impassioned response, “We NEVER drink on set. It’s ‘bad for insurance’ and we would NEVER want to put the show at risk…. NEVER!!!!!”
However, as fans speculated in McElhenney’s Q&A, perhaps those quotation marks around the phrase “bad for insurance” are supposed to accompany a wink and a nudge.
Seeing as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still making new seasons 12 years later and is, presumably, an even more expensive show to insure given the investment FX has made in the series, we probably won’t get any confirmation from any cast member about specific scenes being unsimulatedly boozy until the show finally ends.
As such, let’s just circle back with another McElhenney AMA in about 12-to-20 years.
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