FX forced ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ creators to add Danny DeVito to the cast of the hit TV series.
The two creators of the hit TV series, Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton, who star as Dennis and mac, respectively were on the Nerdist podcast with Chrid Hardwick this week to discuss the 10th season of FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. One of the best highlights of the interview were their thoughts on Danny DeVito, who plays Frank Reynolds on the show, and who is apparently just as drunk and insane in real life as he is on the show. They were surprised to see how much he was able to drink at 70 years old.
McElhenney: The man is 70. What’s unbelievable … is what a 70-year-old man can do. It’s unbelievable.
Howerton: He can tie it on and stay out later than any of us.
McElhenney: I’ve been to Coachella with him a couple of times. It’s mindblowing how a human being can take that. Just the sheer length of the day coupled with whatever it is he puts in his body.
However, they pointed out that initially they didn’t want Danny DeVito on the show but, basically FX forced them to add them to the show.
McElhenney: We didn’t want to [bring him on the show]. We were forced into it. We had a show without him the first season, and then nobody watched it, and so John Landgraf — who is the President of FX — he called me in for a meeting and was like, ‘Hey, no one’s watching the show, but we love it and we want to keep it on, but we don’t have any money for marketing. We need to add somebody with some panache that we can hopefully parlay into some public relations story just so we can get people talking.’
We were really reticent to add anything … that might destroy the chemistry of the show. They started knocking around different names and Danny’s name came up, and we said, ‘I guess that kind of makes sense.’ …
Howerton: We were reticent to adding a “name” to the show, because we kind of liked that we were no-names …
McElhenney: Our first reaction was like, ‘No. I don’t think we want to do that.” And they were like, ‘Well, OK. Then the show is over.’ And we were like, ‘Oh, well, DeVito, huh?’
Years later they are pretty happy that FX added Devito to the cast. Plus he added a lot to the show’s success.
Howerton: It terms of the kind of names that were being thrown around, Danny was perfect. He’s made a career out of playing … despicable characters. Our characters are kind of despicable, but we like to think that they’re lovable in their own kind of way. Danny’s one of those guys with a very unique career who has played so many despicable people and yet, everywhere he goes, you’d think he always played the happy Uncle or the lovable Dad. People LOVE that guy … he’s such a lovable, likable person, that you can sense the warmth and likability underneath all of the despicableness, and that’s the reason why people like him so much, besides the fact that he’s really Fun Size. People like Fun Size things.
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