Rob McElhenney
April 14, 1977 — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Rob McElhenney is an American actor, writer, director, and producer who created It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia at age 27 using a consumer camcorder, and has since shepherded the show through what makes it, as of 2024, the longest-running live-action comedy series in the history of American television.
A Philadelphia Story
Born on April 14, 1977 and raised in Philadelphia, McElhenney moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, landing small roles before conceiving an audacious plan: shoot a pilot for an original comedy series himself, with no money, using his own apartment as a set and friends as cast members, and put it on DVD to submit to networks. The resulting pilot — costing approximately $200 — got FX's attention. The network agreed to produce the show if McElhenney could add a more established actor to the cast. He recruited Danny DeVito.
Sunny and What Came After
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia debuted in 2005 and became a cult phenomenon and then simply a phenomenon — a show about irredeemably terrible people running a bar in South Philadelphia that found its audience and kept it across 16 seasons and counting, its humor remaining sharp and transgressive decades after most comedies have dulled. McElhenney plays Mac, co-owns Wrexham AFC football club in Wales with Ryan Reynolds (a purchase that became the subject of the acclaimed documentary series Welcome to Wrexham), and has starred in the Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest, which he also created.
Did You Know?
For the Season 7 storyline of Always Sunny, McElhenney deliberately gained 60 pounds of actual body fat in four months to play a version of Mac who has "let himself go" — then lost all of it immediately after filming. He described the experience of gaining the weight as surprisingly easy and the experience of losing it as miserable. The storyline is frequently cited as one of the show's boldest creative decisions.
Wrexham and Business Ventures
McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds purchased Wrexham AFC, a lower-league Welsh football club, in 2020 and committed to investing seriously in its on-field success. The documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which followed the purchase and the club's campaigns, won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series in 2023 and brought international attention to a club that had languished in non-league football for years. Under their ownership, Wrexham were promoted from the National League — the fifth tier of English and Welsh football — to the Football League, then promoted again, marking one of sport's more unusual ownership success stories.