Why The It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Cast Had Some Concerns About Fat Mac
There is an unwritten rule with live-action TV shows that the cast members must get more attractive over time. Sometimes, this is an intentional choice meant to signal the character's growing confidence; Peggy from "Mad Men" and Elliot from "Scrubs" both certainly come to mind, with their haircuts and outfits becoming far more stylish as they advanced through their careers. Other times, the change is just the result of the actors having way more money to spend on their appearance as a result of the show's success. Suddenly, they have easy access to plastic surgery, hair transplants, expensive skincare routines, personal trainers, and nutritionists. For Rob McElhenney, this pattern was a little too played out. As he told Collider in a 2011 interview:
"I have never seen a sitcom in which the actors progressively got worse looking, which is, I think, truer to life, especially the lives that these characters lead. And, a character that's always talking about putting on mass and all he does is eat s**t and drink beer, would eventually look like this."
Sure enough, Mac gained 50 pounds by the start of the seventh season, although the character preferred to say he was "cultivating mass." The decision made for some undeniably interesting television, depicting Mac as appropriately oblivious about his own eating habits and the rest of the gang as being exactly as shallow about his weight as we could've guessed. Dennis, in particular, is judgmental and annoyed by the so-called Fat Mac, to the point where it takes him great effort not to celebrate when Mac finds out he's now got type 2 diabetes. The main issue with the change came behind the scenes, as the rest of the cast was a little concerned with the effect this would all have on McElhenney's health.
A mixed bag for Mac
"It's been disgusting to watch him pursue this venture," Charlie Day told Collider. "We're a little bit on the fence about it, just for his own personal health and safety." As McElhenney attested in the same interview, his diet at the time consisted of "eating 5,000 calories a day," which included "a huge shake with Weight Gainer and ice cream" and plenty of donuts. In a later interview with Conan O'Brien, he clarified how he would drink the ice cream melted, right out of the carton.
Needless to say, little of this was healthy, which is part of why he ended up losing the weight by season 8. Merely by going back to his old diet, he was able to lose 23 pounds within the first month, and the rest of it was also relatively easy to shed. "Always Sunny" explained this return to the show's status quo by revealing that Dennis had been secretly slipping Mac diet pills against his wishes. It's an appropriately disturbing solution for a character duo whose friendship has always been deeply unhealthy and manipulative.
Despite all this, McElhenney repeatedly reported that he felt great during his heavier period. "I was jolly as f***," he told The Wrap. "And I was just full of energy because I was eating so much. It was just constant fuel." His character on the show also wasn't thrilled about it: "I was as big as a skyscraper, and now I'm as tiny as a postage stamp," he complained to a therapist. Luckily for Mac, the character would eventually learn to cultivate his mass in a way that even Dennis couldn't undermine — because McElhenney still wasn't finished with changing his body for comedy.
When Mac got buff
The season 13 premiere introduced us to Buff Mac, who was now ripped to a degree that seemed impossible for our perpetually beer-drinking clown. The season's running joke is that, despite spending all of season 7 bashing Mac for gaining weight, the gang now has nothing positive to say about Mac finally getting a body he's proud of and excited to show off. Even though Mac now looks like Hercules, they neither notice nor care.
For Rob McElhenney, this transformation was far more difficult than what he went through in season 7. When asked about his diet and exercise, he was quick to joke on Instagram that none of what he'd done was attainable for any person who doesn't have millions of dollars and lots of free time at their disposal:
"All you need to do is lift weights six days a week, stop drinking alcohol, don't eat anything after 7pm, 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."
Unlike Fat Mac, however, Buff Mac is here to stay. It might seem like just another example of sitcom characters getting better looking as the show goes on, but one could argue that this is a visual representation of Mac's character journey. After years of struggling with his sexuality, he finally achieved his skyscraper body shortly after he came out. Although "Always Sunny" is famous for denying its characters' happiness, it's nice that Mac was allowed to reach at least one of his goals.