‘It's Always Sunny' Star Charlie Day Didn't Want to Do Rob Mac's ‘Abbott Elementary,' ‘Golden Bachelor' Crossovers

Yahoo

10-07-2025

As 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' enters its 17th season after nearly two decades, its team of writers/stars (Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and Rob Mac) has become a well-oiled machine. They'd have to be to keep one of the longest-running sitcoms of all time on the rails – but that doesn't mean they always see eye-to-eye.
'Sunny's' double crossover with 'Abbott Elementary' and 'The Golden Bachelor' was one of these times.
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In a joint interview with Danny DeVito for the LA Times, Charlie Day talked about the two big crossovers included in Season 17. While Rob Mac (neé Rob McElhenney) was a significant proponent of the crossovers, Day initially struggled to get on board.
'Rob has these really big ideas, like buying a soccer team,' Day joked in the interview. 'He wanted to do this 'Abbott' crossover, and he wanted to do this 'Golden Bachelor' episode. To be perfectly frank, I didn't really want to do both. I think you can do one or the other. The 'Golden Bachelor' thing I thought was funny, but I was like, maybe we could just do the 'Sunny' characters' version of it. But to his credit, those are the things that people latch onto and are talking about.'
The 17th season of 'Always Sunny' opens with the second half of a crossover they began this year on 'Abbott Elementary.' The first episode, which aired in January, saw the 'Abbott' crew react to the 'Sunny' gang as court-mandated volunteers at the school. By 'Sunny' standards, the group's antics were relatively tame, with Glenn Howerton's sociopathic Dennis Reynolds almost entirely absent from the episode. The 'Always Sunny' half of the crossover, titled 'The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary,' airs Wednesday as part of a two-episode premiere — and will likely be a bit less calm.
According to the LA Times interview, the gang will have their crossover with 'The Golden Bachelor' in the season finale of 'Always Sunny.' A trailer for the show's 17th season showed glimpses of this episode, in which Frank joins 'The Golden Bachelor' in a quest to find his own Hawk Tuah analog, here named 'Cock Chewa.' Her catchphrase? 'Chew on that thang!'
You can watch the Season 17 trailer below.
'I had no idea what they had in mind at first because I must admit, I'm not a 'Golden Bachelor' watcher,' DeVito said in the interview. 'Once I got there and figured out what they had up their sleeve, I just went with it big time. Being Frank is really wonderful, I must say. It gives you the opportunity to do a lot of things that you wouldn't. And they push the envelope and come up with all these crazy things, and I go along with it, and from the time my feet hit the ground, when I get there, I'm smiling.'
Day noted that these kinds of riffs are not his favorite aspect of 'Always Sunny.' Two crossovers, he said, was more than he intended to have in a single season. Mac disagreed.
'I tend to like when we're not doing the pop culture references as much, but then we have a big back-and-forth and we argue,' Day said. 'And then when we land on it, the second we agree to do it, then I'm always all-in, as is Rob. So then we're both writing together and saying, well, what's the best version of how to do this?'
But with a seasoned comic actor like DeVito in the cast, however, Day said it's easier to make ideas like this work.
'Rob and Glenn and I spend weeks and months really digging in and arguing and pushing each other out of our comfort zones in all sorts of directions. And then towards the end, we're all invested in the same thing. And what really makes it work is that Danny comes in and gives it a hundred percent,' Day said. 'Really, if Danny wasn't so supportive, it would be really challenging. But pretty much everything we bring to you, Danny, you say, 'OK, I'm going to make this work.' 'Golden Bachelor' was a perfect example. We had a lot of arguments about how to do that, whether to do it. And then once we committed to it and tried to write what we thought was the best version of it we could, Dan, you come in and just sell it in a way that it needs to be sold.'
'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' Season 17 premieres July 9 on FXX and will be available to stream on Hulu.
The post 'It's Always Sunny' Star Charlie Day Didn't Want to Do Rob Mac's 'Abbott Elementary,' 'Golden Bachelor' Crossovers appeared first on TheWrap.