Looked at one way, Rob McElhenney‘s career is defined by unprecedented consistency. Renewed by FX for its forthcoming 15th season, “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia“—the show he co-created in 2005 and in which he’s starred as Mac ever since—is poised to set the record for most seasons by a live-action comedy series. The saga of five Philadelphia sociopaths bellying up to their bar (Paddy’s Pub) and plotting outlandish, self-destructive schemes is as reliably funny now as it was before anyone had ever uttered the phrase “streaming service.”
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But that consistency also makes McElhenney a fascinating speaker on rolling with the changes in the TV industry, comedy meeting politics, and launching a second original comedy—”Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.”
“If you are the autocrat and you’re in charge and you just dictate to everyone how it’s going to be … at best you become a dinosaur that nobody gives a shit about,” McElhenney says. “At worst, you become an immobile, hardcore, staunch person who just refuses to learn or grow. And I’m just never going to let that happen.”
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Apple TV+’s “Mythic Quest” finds McElhenney starring in another toxic workplace. This time he plays Ian (lovingly and pretentiously pronounced Ion), the megalomaniacal leader of a leading video game developer. The new comedy dropped its first season in February but then checked in again in late-May with a quarantine episode made to look entirely as though it were taking place over a Zoom-type program. The quarantine special is just the latest example of a workplace comedy pushing all kinds of boundaries with its shifting tone, cut-scene style, and tech space subject matter.
In the interview below, McElhenney talks about the challenges of making television remotely, basing a “Mythic Quest” character played by F. Murray Abraham on George R.R. Martin, and what it’s like to constantly address Mac’s body transformations.
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