It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Q&A with Danny DeVito

I have to agree with Danny DeVito when he says in essence that there’s no real way you can explain It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and the folks of Paddy’s Pub to someone who’s never run into the likes of them before. For while it is true that Sunny revolves around the owners and workers of a blue collar “high class” bar in Philadelphia, can you really explain the likes of Denis, Sweet Dee, Mac, Frank and Charlie Kelly King of the Rats to someone who’s never been introduced to them? I’ll give you a moment to think about the impossibility of that…

“When I explain the show to people who may not have seen it, I always refer to the dumpster baby…”

What’s that…? Recently I had the chance to phone in for a conference call with Danny DeVito who portrays patriarch Frank Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny. During the call, Mr. DeVito let us in on how he explains the folks of Paddy’s Pub:

“Two people are walking down the street and they’re talking about waste and saving the planet. They throw a wrapper away in the dumpster because that is the proper place for it, and they find a baby.” Oh yeah, I remember that one. “…they’re going to be nice to the baby. They believe they can do it. The baby becomes part of them and then the next thing you know, he’s being painted with shoe polish and trying to get the parts on television because they’re only hiring Hispanics and African Americans.”

So the best way to explain the folks of Paddy’s Pub is, I guess, to let them speak for themselves. Which as staunch advocates of the Bill of Rights, these guys most definitely enjoy. Using their freedom of speech, the gang has taken on the issues of welfare, North Korea, and high gas prices in the seven seasons that the show’s been on the air. Covering such water cooler topics as dumpster babies and child molestation, the question becomes where do you draw the line of what’s too far?

“I think that every once in a while there is a barb that gets close to the line,” DeVito said. “I think we try to stay as close to the nerve as possible, but I got a feeling it’s where it’s coming from with the way Dennis and Dee and Mac, Charlie, and Frank operate in their daily lives that takes a little bit of the onus off it, so you can get objective, you get behind it.”

Speaking of turning around to the gang’s way of thinking, DeVito tells us about the evolution of his character Frank over the past seasons. Initially introduced in the show’s second season, Frank started off as the estranged father of Sweet Dee and Dennis who was aghast at the reprobates that his children turned into. Fast forward to the current seasons and Frank is a willing participant in all the gang’s schemes. “They’ve kind of infected me with this pulsing desire to get into mischief,” DeVito said, “but I did ask for it.”

“[Frank] wants to live in squalor and filth,” DeVito tells us, “and he wants to experience everything that he never got a chance to do, that he always criticized possibly in the past. But always deep down, he really wanted to do that thing where he just put on the Mardi Gras beads and go out and party all night and find somebody who he could buy to have sex with. He just never did it before. He was a business man, his nose to the grindstone. He needed that liberation. He needed that freedom and it is cathartic. It’s cathartic for Frank… they’re half his age and he gets a chance to put his foot on the running board of a wild racecar that he probably couldn’t drive on his own. ”

It’s cathartic for DeVito as well as he tells us that he takes a special sort of pleasure in living out Frank’s raucous life. “Since I’ve taken this leap into this wonderful arena with Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson, I always live pretty much free and always have a lot of fun, but this is really relaxing… it’s wonderful getting up out of bed in the morning, going down there, and having a ball,” he said.

On speaking of It’s Always Sunny, DeVito tells us that he loves working on the show and that he loves the freedom that the writers give the actors during the scenes. “We have a script that is written every week; [it] is really well-written. They put it all together,” he said. “And then we’re allowed to venture off a little bit. It’s kind of like an improv, but it’s not. You don’t call it that. We just get into the situation and then everybody parries with each other.”

DeVito tells us about one scene in particular in which he and cast mate McElhenney [who plays Mac] were fighting over lines: “Rob looked at me, and he was so mad. He said ‘I ought to put my finger through your eye, you little …,’ I laughed my … off, but it’s out of these come the funniest situations, where they’re spontaneous. But they do write some really great stuff, so it leads you in the path of hilarity.”

“I have so much fun on all the shows,” DeVito said. “This season has been particularly fun with rum ham and stuff like that, and Dee getting audited, and Frank’s ‘Little Beauties.’ Thursday we have a show coming up with a bunch of good actors in it and the rest of us. We have a show where I meet my brother and that is fun. It’s a lot of fun. ”

Speaking more on Thursday’s episode, DeVito tells us that he’s really looking forward to seeing the premiere of this episode in which we learn even more about Dee and Dennis’ degenerate pop. “I see my brother for the first time in many, many years and we had a very sordid past. This is kind of fun. This is like a show that does flashbacks and you get a little bit more insight into what “Frank” went through as a young man. I’m looking forward to this.”

Take a look into Frank’s past in It’s Always Sunny with Frank’s brother as it premieres this Thursday, October 13.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia airs Thursdays at 10/9c on FX.