KROLL: Well you were talking about the theory that everybody gets better looking on TV as shows go on.
You know what the most fun was, was getting rid of any shred of vanity. Most people would have a harder time losing it. Still at the same time every day.Īlso Read: 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' Renewed for 2 More Seasons as Stars Close New Overall Deal MCELHENNEY: It was almost exactly the same. MCELHENNEY: Um, you know, it wasn’t more volume – But it’s just true that if you decrease the amount of calories you are eating you’re body doesn’t have the fuel to create fat.
It’s definitely more difficult depending on your genetic makeup. MCELHENNEY: I’m not saying it’s not difficult. Regardless of your metabolism, if you stop consuming so many calories, you will lose weight. And I thought, that’s enough.Īnd you’ve lost 23 pounds in a month? That’s the most amazing part of this. When did you decide to stop gaining and turn it around?
MCELHENNEY: I’m going to go on the record saying there is no f-ing way in hell that anybody – well, maybe Charlie, at one point might, if he becomes a big enough movie star – might actually get nominated for an Emmy.Īlso Read: Fat Mac No More: 'Always Sunny' Star McElhenney Loses Most of the Weight MCELHENNEY: I’m so happy that people might think that.ĭo you think you could get an Emmy for committing like this? When I first heard about this, I assumed you just gained a lot of sympathy weight during your wife’s pregnancy and decided to pretend it was for the show. MCELHENNEY: A friend of mine recently described his penis as a button on a fur coat. KROLL: Did it look like a penny with a button on the end? It really is a very, very crushing psychological gain. MCELHENNEY: Well, first of all, I don’t exactly know what you mean by that, but I will say this: My legs and my gut got so big that my penis looked even smaller.
And I was just full of energy, because I was eating so much. Was it a fat-men-are-jolly kind of thing? MCELHENNEY: And I feel like for the first time in my life I’ve been watching the show like, “All right, I’m almost as funny as everybody else.” And every day one of my meals was a high-calorie protein shake.Īlso Read: FX's 'Always Sunny' Model: Low Costs, Total Freedom But when you’re four months in it and you have to muscle down 1,000 calories for the third time or fourth time in a day and you have to either eat three chicken breasts, two cups of rice and two cups of vegetables - or one Big Mac - you start to see the Big Mac and realize it’s a lot easier to get down … And then every once in a while I would eat three donuts. ROB MCELHENNEY: As I started off I was doing it with chicken breast and rice and vegetables. To gain the weight, you ate five 1,000-calorie meals a day. Warning: The following discussion of every aspect of sudden weight gain gets very graphic. As he spoke with TheWrap and Kroll, McElhenney ate a sensible lunch of pasta and salad ( pictured at right). McElhenney has already lost nearly half the weight in a month, after spending five months packing it on.
His wife, Kaitlin Olson, was especially uninterested after having their first child last year.) (He tried to get the whole cast to join in the weight gain, but all passed. McElhenney noticed that characters always get better looking in later seasons, as storylines get more syrupy and their stars get richer.Īs his show entered its seventh season, he decided sudden weight gain would be a perfect way to mock other shows and capsize the relentless vanity of his character, Mac. “Sunny” tears down sitcom conventions and aspires to make its characters as unlikable as possible. We were on hand recently as Kroll talked to McElhenney about his weight gain - and left no question unturned.Īlso Read: Charlie Day-Hosted 'Saturday Night Live' Hits Season High Ratings (Video)īefore we get into it, a little background: Rob McElhenney, star of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” is thriving on the awkwardness he created by increasing his body mass by nearly a third – just because he thought it would be funny.įortunately, Nick Kroll of FX’s “The League” has no filter. It’s hard to know what to say when someone suddenly gains 50 pounds, especially when that someone isn’t a pregnant woman.