Rob McElhenney on Why Mac Got Swole for ‘Always Sunny’ Season 13

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is no stranger to big changes. This is the show that took a sweet pastor nicknamed Cricket and broke him down until he turned into a homeless addict selling his body for drugs. But Mac is coming into Always Sunny‘s 13th season armed with two of the biggest changes in the show’s history. Not only will this year mark the first time the character has started a season as openly gay, but he’s also returning to Paddy’s Pub completely, ridiculously swole.

At the Television Critics Association‘s 2018 summer tour Decider spoke to Rob McElhenney, the show’s creator and actor behind Mac, about how these huge changes impact his character this season. The short answer? They don’t change a thing.

Though Mac’s concealed homosexuality has been a recurring Always Sunny joke for years, he finally officially came out of the closet in Season 12’s “Hero or Hate Crime?” It was important to the show’s writers that Mac didn’t become a Pollyanna just because he was now openly gay.

“We felt that was the opposite of what we are trying to do, which was trying to normalize the LGBTQ community within the context of Sunny,” McElhenney said. “Saying that ‘Of course Mac as a gay man can still be a piece of shit’ is part and parcel to normalization. So we felt like it would be doing a disservice not only to the show but to the community itself if we were to change his character other than the fact that he is now out of the closet.”

McElhenney consulted with people in the LGBT community and drew on his own family experiences to write Mac. “I grew up in the LGBT community. I was raised by two women, and I have two brothers that are out,” he said. But he doesn’t see his research as a perfect replacement for personal experience. “As much as I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what it’s like to be in the community, I can’t really know for sure and I don’t know exactly what it’s like to grow up like that.”

But Mac’s out and proud sexuality is far from the only big change in store for the bodyguard and co-creator of Fight Milk this year. Mac legitimately cultivated mass this season, showing off a body that Fat Mac could only dream of. But McElhenney didn’t buff up to change Mac or make a statement. He did it for a single joke.

“I feel like … every time a male actor takes his shirt off in a movie or television show they seem to look like a greek god out of nowhere!” he said. “I thought that is such a funny thing to explore if you have a character who has put in so much effort and energy to get as ripped as possible, and it literally took me months and months and months. And you show it off for essentially 45 seconds in one scene, and the [other] characters are not impressed. They tell you to put your shirt on.”

“That seemed funny to me. It seems like a tremendous amount of effort for what amounts to 45 seconds of vanity and then it all goes away.”

According to McElhenney, Mac only spends a few seconds in Season 13 shirtless. But there will be a later episode that reveals why he actually cultivated mass. Much like McElhenny’s 50-pound weight gain for Season 7, his epic bulk up is also connected to Mac’s body dysmorphia. “It’s trying to change yourself in a physical way to please other people or at least to satiate some need to be something different than you are,” he said. “And then watching as the characters and the show itself basically say that you’re fine the way you were. Or actually, you’re a piece of shit the way you were.”

“Either way, changing your physical appearance is not gonna make much of a difference,” he added.

Season 13 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia premieres on FXX Wednesday, September 5 at 10 p.m.

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