BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM THE EDITORS: We first noticed him 16 years ago as an above-average-looking guy on a quirky basic-cable comedy, but none of us really saw Rob McElhenney until The Dance. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia had been on for 13 seasons at that point—this was 2018—and viewers had come to expect the odd and unexpected from “the gang.”
But nobody expected the sight of a shirtless McElhenney leading a partner in a four-and-a-half-minute rain-soaked, extremely dramatic pas de deux—a scene best described, to quote one viewer at length, “as pure art . . . one of the most beautiful [four and a half] minutes I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t think I can recall a dance sequence that ever left me in tears. What’s interesting about perception is how we really don’t know each other. When I say ‘each other,’ I mean everyone on this great green spinning shit-wheel. Everyone has a secret or a talent or something that is inside of them that needs to come out. That was the first time I really looked at [McElhenney] in a way that was much different.”
Us too, and what we saw wasn’t just another above-average-looking guy who’d recently transformed his body—losing 70 pounds and getting shredded into eight-pack shape—but a man of hidden depths and boundless ambitions. As Sunny costar Danny DeVito whispers toward the end of The Dance, “Oh my God . . . I get it.”
McElhenney, now 44 and a father of two, has been busy working through those depths and ambitions ever since. Sunny, which he cocreated and stars on with wife Kaitlin Olson, will enter its 15th season (thus officially beating The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet for the longest-running live-action TV comedy in history) when it returns (hopefully) later this year. He also cocreated and stars on Mythic Quest, the Apple TV+ sitcom that answers the question “What would happen if you crossed League of Legends with The Office?”; its second season starts on May 7. Somehow he managed to find time to buy Wrexham A.F.C, a fifth-tier soccer team in Wales, with Ryan Reynolds (that’s right, the Deadpool actor and Aviation Gin co-owner), who also happens to be the teary-eyed Sunny stan quoted earlier. The two guys became pandemic friends, and since they both know a little about physical transformations and life as a modern man, we thought it might be fun if Reynolds, also 44, interviewed McElhenney for Men’s Health. Reynolds kindly agreed, though he had to start with a confession.
Ryan Reynolds: We’ve never met, which is the weirdest thing, because we Zoom and text every day. We’re kinda like work spouses—everything we’ve done has happened during the pandemic. Rob was somebody I had always admired, because he’s an engine of creativity. Then I saw The Dance, and I couldn’t not reach out. Like a classic fanboy, I DM’d him just to say how much I admire him, and I sent him a case of Aviation Gin, because I’m nothing if not a pusher.
Rob McElhenney: I was in Mexico and I had posted a photograph of my wife and me drinking tequila. I remember getting a DM from Ryan, and he was like, “Stop drinking that shit. I’m going to send you a case of Aviation Gin.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, that sounds good. I’ll drink anything.” Then Ryan said, “Oh, by the way, I’m a big fan of yours.” And I said, “Obviously I’m a big fan of yours.” And we just became text buddies.
Reynolds: I have very limited experience interviewing anyone, but one thing that I’m genuinely curious about is your wild body transformation. This is what Rob McElhenney wrote about his transformation: “Look, it’s not that hard. All you need to do is lift weights six days a week, stop drinking alcohol, don’t eat anything after 7 P.M., don’t eat any carbs or sugar at all. In fact just don’t eat anything you like. Get the personal trainer from Magic Mike, sleep nine hours a night, run three miles a day, and have a studio pay for the whole thing over a six- to seven-month span. I don’t know why everyone’s not doing this. It’s a super-realistic lifestyle and an appropriate body image to compare oneself to. #hollywood.”
McElhenney: So that was when I got into really, really good shape. I’m fascinated with the presentation of the human body, and the way it’s been presented for the last 30 or so years, and what’s considered attractive versus what is considered realistic. For Sunny, I spend a lot of time in writers’ rooms with comedy writers, and our job is to tear each other apart and to tear the culture apart—what’s going on in the cultural conversation, and how can we satirize that in a way that nobody else is really doing? I just thought: Well, I want to try to build a body that’s absolutely ridiculous and truly impossible to keep up unless you devoted your entire life to it. So when people ask, “How did you get that ripped?” everything I named in that post is exactly what I did, and it’s a completely unsustainable lifestyle.
Reynolds: It seems like you’re still in pretty good shape. Rather than just dwell on the superficial aspect, one thing that strikes me is you must really like acting. When I see Christian Bale lose 929,000 pounds for one role, I think that guy right there was literally born to act. I do not like acting enough to become my own shadow. Sometimes working out to be that ripped is not healthy. I just feel like if I did end up in that position, I would not trust myself to not actually eat my children. I wouldn’t blink. I’d go home and I’d bite one of their heads off. I’d deal with the prison sentence and the media fallout as it came. I think it’s a very interesting line to walk, you know?
McElhenney: Without a doubt. I had gotten to the point with Sunny—because we had been doing it for so long—that I used it as an opportunity to keep challenging myself and to learn new things. People might think it’s ridiculous that I would spend the better part of four months training, and learning how to dance, for a [four-and-a-half] minute sequence. And to me, it has nothing to do with the sequence and everything to do with the four months that led up to it, because it was just such a fun challenge for me and something I had always wanted to do. But it’s interesting: I’ve been doing [Sunny] for a long time, and now I’ve got [Mythic Quest], and we’ve got the football thing going on, but by far, the thing that people ask me about more than anything else is body transformation.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this, too, but the people who were most fascinated by my body when I was in great shape were dudes. Women could give two shits. In fact, my wife really was displeased with the way I looked, because she felt like I was trying too hard, and I was. I was! There’s this fascination that men want to look like that and men want to be that aesthetically pleasing to other men. I’m actually talking about straight men as much as men in the gay community. It’s interesting that it’s not based in sexuality or sex appeal and more about this body image that we’ve sort of grown accustomed to. It’s the thing people find fascinating, because it relates to their lives. So much of it is wrapped up in health, but also aesthetics and sex and all sorts of things that make us human, and it’s something we’re all grappling with in different ways every day.
I consider myself a very disciplined person. I eat really clean. I work out hard. I go to work really hard. I spend a lot of time with my family. I take my kids to school every day. I try to stay as regimented as possible. But if I don’t have whatever that thing is for people—that cookie, that pizza, or that manhattan I like to drink every single night—I will be miserable. And I know that about myself. So that’s actually a sustainable lifestyle for me. Like, I see the Rock or Kumail [Nanjiani] or whoever it might be who’s in crazy good shape; they say, “Oh, I have a cheat meal every Friday.” Great for them. I’m glad that works for them. I have a cheat meal every single day, because that’s sustainable for me. I think that is why Kaitlin probably enjoyed me being heavier than she did me being really ripped—it’s a more fun lifestyle. When I’m in crazy good shape, I don’t think that’s healthy looking.
Reynolds: That dovetails into my next question, which is: What are the expectations of men in Hollywood besides not being knuckle-dragging poo-throwers of antiquated power structures?
McElhenney: I don’t know. I don’t want to cry foul too much, because women have been held to a very difficult and specific standard for so long and continue to be, and men have had the benefit of not being held to such a stringent standard, aesthetically at least. However, I will say—and I hear this from a lot of men, and I think it’s a little bit less taboo to talk about—that men, too, are held to a standard of masculinity that’s impossible to live up to or is probably essentially unethical to live up to: that sort of quiet, masculine tough guy who’s both jacked and ready to throw down at any moment but also sensitive—but not too sensitive.
And aesthetically, the superhero stuff hasn’t helped. We now have this ideal of being the biggest dude or the most ripped guy in the room. Brad Pitt, for example, in Fight Club—that’s the body type that I hear more men talk about than anything else. But Brad Pitt in Fight Club is probably 150 pounds soaking wet—he’s just all sinewy muscle—and I bet if you stood next to him back in 1999, or whenever that movie was, he would seem frail, because the ideal body type now is fucking jacked. So I don’t know. Do you?
Reynolds: No, I don’t know. I don’t know if there are a lot of rules now.
Men’s Health, butting in: Speaking of ideal body types, Rob’s trainer told us Rob wanted to look like a fire hydrant.
Reynolds: So you want to be pissed on all day?
McElhenney: [Laughs.] Yeah, so we were in the middle of Covid and I was like, “I don’t have anything to get in shape for, but I have all this pent-up energy and anxiety just from being locked in the house, and I’m looking to work out for the sake of just alleviating that.” Then as a joke, I said I wanted to look like a fire hydrant or like a bulldog. It was really just a function of “Hey, what is the heaviest weight I can lift?”
Reynolds: I can’t do the heavy-heavy thing anymore—my body just sounds like a symphony of muscles snapping.
McElhenney: Well, I think for me it’s probably a midlife-crisis situation. I’d never been athletic my entire life. I was always too small or too slow or just not athletic enough, so now I’m saying, “What’s the next physical challenge?”
Reynolds: Mailbox. You should go for a mailbox.
McElhenney: Dump truck. [Laughs.] No. I just played golf with our mutual friend Jason Bateman again yesterday. Jason will play golf four times a week now. So whenever he calls me, I’m like, “Okay, I will go play with you.” This is the stereotypical old-man thing, but I want to get really good at golf. Maybe just because it’s a challenge and I’m not good at it. It’s the complete opposite of lifting heavy. You have to become less muscular and more flexible. So I’m going to start doing a lot more yoga, a lot more Pilates, so I can beat the shit out of Bateman.
Reynolds: Why don’t you fuck off with the golf and learn some football? We need to know football. We own a football team. For our readers in the United States and Canada, we’re speaking about soccer.
Men’s Health, butting in (again): Wait—so you guys went from total strangers to Instagram friends to buying a pro sports team together in the span of, what, a year?
McElhenney: We literally would just text back and forth for a while if we thought something was funny, and I always thought, Oh, he seems like a great person. I think we would be great friends, but I think that he would also be a great person to work with.
Reynolds: I would say the same thing of you. One thing I heard about Rob, which I found to be really attractive in a business partner, is character. This is a strong moral and ethical character. But also the work ethic. I could be a moron and still see the work ethic. Talent can wax and wane, but work ethic, man, and discipline—you can out-discipline people. Rob is kind of an island unto himself, and I have great respect for that.
McElhenney: I remember saying to Kaitlin, “Do you think it’s a good idea if I ask Ryan if he wants to be a partner?” And she said, “Well, that depends on whether or not your ego can take sharing space with Ryan Reynolds.” And the truth is, my first thought was Ooh, you’re right. But that’s the kind of partnership we have: recognizing what my strengths are and my stretches are, and vice versa.
Reynolds: We don’t know anything about running a football club. The best leaders I know and get to work with often say, “I don’t know.” I do it all the time. I make sure I’m working with people who can help me grow and help me learn, too. I’m very comfortable sharing power and sharing money. I’m very comfortable stepping aside when needed and when there’s a dearth of equity, both inside and outside the industry. I never would have guessed this in my early 20s, but those kinds of things are the most freeing things. I see those qualities in Rob, and it’s a really nice partnership in that context. I feel like I see him, and he sees me, and I feel like I can be vulnerable with him, and I feel like he can be vulnerable with me. To me, masculinity in 2021 is so much about allowing yourself to acknowledge your deficits, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to just be who and what you are instead of this other thing that maybe our dads conditioned us to believe in.
There’s an ancient Chinese proverb—I’m not in the business of spouting Chinese proverbs, but this one sticks with me: Who knows what’s good or bad? I live a little bit by that, which is that you don’t know in the moment what’s good or bad. When I look back at my life and the things that really hurt me, they’re all things that became incredibly precious and important assets later on. That leads to my next question: What is your vulnerability? Not physical vulnerability but the one when you close your eyes, you find yourself dwelling on it.
McElhenney: That’s a good question. Um . . .
Reynolds: Like for some people, it’s I’m not good enough. For some people, it’s shame.
McElhenney: I think I would be remiss or even untruthful if I didn’t recognize that there is a certain amount of need for me to please people and to want their approval. Whose, I don’t really know. But it’s definitely external. I don’t know if that’s something that drives me on a conscious level, but there’s a reason I chose my profession, seeking that level of validation.
Reynolds: Most people in showbiz, to a greater or lesser extent, have a greater thirst for validation. That’s also the drive. I know from my experience that what I love about what I do happens between “Action!” and “Cut!” In between “Action!” and “Cut!” I don’t feel any physical pain, I don’t feel any emotional pain, unless it’s required in the scene. I feel present. It’s one of the few places outside of looking at my children that I feel completely settled in the here and now. In other places in my life, I have to cultivate that.
McElhenney: Do you experience that working out?
Reynolds: Yes. Working out to me is a meditation. I’m counting. For the next 20 reps, all I’m going to do is count. And if I lose count, I’m going to stop and I’m going to start again. And to me, that’s meditation.
McElhenney: I think that is such a big part of the appeal. It’s funny, I was just talking to Kumail, who’s a good friend and who got in fucking insane shape for this Marvel movie, and I keep seeing him on Instagram and he’s not really going back to normal Kumail. I was like, “You’re going to have a tough time going back, aren’t you?” He said yes. Part of it is, sure, the aesthetic pleasure. But really it’s because he feels so good, like this is the way he’s supposed to feel walking around. It’s also the meditative process of the working out. It’s finding yourself in that zone. It’s painful and it sucks sometimes, but even if I was in pain for that hour or ten seconds, that’s when I didn’t feel anything other than the moment itself. That itself becomes a drug, where you want to chase that, because it feels like it’s when you’re truly living.
Reynolds: Yeah, when our lives feel so out of control, I think there’s real control in that. It’s also that idea that there’s nothing—your body, a movie, a novel, whatever it is that you’re working on—you don’t ever really finish. You abandon it at some point. These are never-ending projects. You don’t just get into the best shape of your life and then you just stay there. Our bodies age, they oxidize, they break down. We have to continue to figure out new and inventive ways to carry on, and I find that really interesting.
In particular, as you get a little bit older, the greatest secret that has been the most liberating thing to me was as soon as I stopped trying to be right all the time, everything clicked. Everything. When I stopped trying to be right and instead to be loving, or instead to learn something, everything else, all that insecurity, fell away. That artifice and bravado vanished. I really found projects and life fulfilling in ways that I hadn’t before, which is part of what our Wrexham journey is about. I don’t want to be right; I want to learn.
McElhenney: One hundred percent. And there are so many different manifestations of that, if you’re aware of it. For example, my size— I’m five-foot-nine. I joke about it a lot, but am I actually insecure about being five-foot-nine? No. And the reason I’m not is that I hit a certain point in my life when I realized I wasn’t going to grow anymore. That’s it. So what the fuck am I going to do? Am I going to spend the rest of my life lamenting that? Or am I going to go, “Well, this is who I am, and I guess if you can’t get on board with that, then there’s nothing I can do for you.” Not only does that liberate me and make me feel so okay about myself, but you also realize that nobody gives a shit except me. Nobody! Nobody!
Reynolds: That’s the most sage advice, by the way: Nobody gives a shit. I remember talking to other actors, who’d ask me, “Oh, should I be on social media? I feel like people think I’m selling out.” I’m always like, “It’s okay. Nobody gives a shit, so do whatever you like. Go on Instagram. Start telling people about who you are; don’t tell people who you are. They’re not going to give a shit either way. Do whatever makes you happy. Find your North Star. Go. Fly.”
McElhenney: That is such a great lesson, and to bring it back to golf, because that’s what I’m doing now, I have this golf instructor, and we’re playing a round and I hit some shot, and I turn to him and say, “Ah, I just shanked it.” And he goes, “I’m sorry. I don’t care.” And I go, “Oh.” Then he just kept walking away.
Reynolds: Well, that’s just insensitive!
McElhenney: No! It’s great. Because it was a part of the lesson. If you get so wrapped up in why you made a mistake and then you turn to somebody to look for some level of validation, you’re looking in the wrong direction. The only way to look is inward.
This story appears in the May 2021 issue of Men's Health .
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