It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Yeah. Now, just gauging on a lot of the episode titles for this upcoming season, your character Dennis I believe. In some episode titles, he gets a puppy in one episode, and he looks like a child molester in another episode. That’s all they give you, but it makes perfect sense to people who have seen the show, that you can do that. What’s it like doing both of these?

Well OK, first of all, “Dennis Gets a Puppy.” I loved that, because that is a title which I think has been on IMDB for like, three years. It’s never been a show that we ever made, it’s not. The longer it’s up there – ’cause it’s been up there since season one – the longer it’s up there, the more tempted we are to actually make an episode called “Dennis Gets a Puppy,” ’cause there isn’t one. There is no such episode.

I don’t know why that error has never been corrected. We’ve never tried to correct, ’cause I think we all sort of collectively love that. Everybody keeps expecting an episode with that title, but maybe one of these days, we’ll actually get to tell it.


But do you look like a child molester in an episode?

Absolutely, yeah, that’s a good one. I’m actually looking forward to that one. Basically what happens, something that happens very often, is that the Philadelphia… I actually don’t know the name, but whatever correctional institution that they have, gets basically overcrowded. And they have to release a certain number of low-priority inmates.

What happens is amongst those people, there is one shady child molester individual named Wendell Albright, who gets released. He moves into the neighborhood close to where Charlie lives, and where the bar is. And basically there are all these flyers going up all around town about, “Keep your eyes out for this child molester, we don’t want him in our neighborhood, blah blah blah.”

And we look at the flyers, and this guy looks a lot like Dennis. So that of course creates a big problem for my character throughout the episode, trying to distinguish myself from this guy. Because people are literally yelling things at me in the streets, and slinging their feces at me. And then along with that, Mac’s dad also gets released from the same prison. So that creates the storyline for that, becomes kind of the thing that our characters are dealing with as well.


Definitely sounds like a keeper, and a classic in the manner of exactly what you’d expect from an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Yeah, we’re going through a lot of really fun, out-there places this year. We really decided to kind of go, for lack of a better phrase, balls-out this year and really just have fun with it. Really take the premise of our show, take these characters and throw them into some pretty wild situations.

We decided to get a little bit more theatrical with the whole thing, and a little bit more filmic as well. Little bit more, we’re really exploring, playing with some fun music through the episodes. Through some of the episodes, and sort of like film thematic sequences and things like that.

It’s a little bit experimental, and I think it makes for some really great laughs this year. And we’re going into some really out-there places, it’s gonna be a great season.


Just from the episode I saw earlier today, the serial killer one, there’s a scene where your character and Dee are chasing another woman dressed as a painter and a clown. It’s shot with the music, it’s very theatrical, and outside the box of what you’d expect from an episode.

Yeah, it’s very cinematic.


Exactly. And on the show last season, you obviously got Danny DeVito playing, well you thought he was your father, but he actually wasn’t. Instead your father was Stephen Collins, another guest actor who’s appeared on your show. What’s it like working with those two as your surrogate fathers on TV?

Well, it’s so fun to work with Danny. For obvious reasons, he’s just one of the most brilliantly, sort of acerbic, evil, funny, loveable character actors of our time. He’s a guy that we all grew up with, and he’s just brilliant. He brings so much experience, and so much, he brings so much to the show.

He’s got such a great energy, and he’s just a lovely human being. My personal theory about Danny is that, the reason people… It’s weird that somebody who has played so many demented, evil, rotten characters in films in the past is so loved by the general public.

I think it’s because as a human being, a person we like, he’s such a sweet, loving, family-oriented, good-hearted guy. That no matter how evil the character he plays, and how evil he plays it, somehow that good name still comes through. And becomes sort of amazing, in a sense that he can play such horrible characters, and still have you love him.

And Stephen was just great, because coming off a show like 7th Heaven, he has a tendency to come off as so vanilla, and so nice, and so sweet. And to twist that around and push him in this world with these awful, selfish human beings, and have him actually be one of their family members, that’s just a fun thing to play with.

He right away last year came on, and embraced that fully. We wanted him to come on, in the sense, to do what he does really well. Which is just be a sweet, sweet man. But he’s such a brilliant actor, and he’s so funny on the show, and he is coming back this year as well.


And what about the woman who plays your mother, Anne Archer? Is she coming back as well?

You know what? I’m gonna leave that, it’s a little bit of a secret. There’s a little twist on that, and yeah. So in a sense, yeah, that will be a story point this year.


OK, well, thank you very much for talking to us, Glenn. And I hope that in season four, your character finally gets a puppy.

We have talked about building a storyline just based on that title, so hopefully someday that will happen in the future.



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-Interview conducted by John Kubicek
(Image courtesy of FX)