How It's Always Sunny's Charlie Day Made One Uncle Jack Scene Even More Ridiculous
The writing on the long-running FX comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is some of the funniest in the business, but sometimes it's really the performances that make the show so hilarious. Whether it's the way Glenn Howerton punctuates his rage with pitchy staccato line reads or simply the way Danny DeVito pronounces the word "no," the way certain moments are interpreted by the actors can really make or break a joke. One of the funniest moments in all of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" involves a bit of screaming and not too much actual dialogue, all courtesy of Andrew Friedman's character Uncle Jack — although it turns out there was a bit of help from co-star, writer, and producer Charlie Day.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread, Friedman revealed that Day helped him a bit with a now-infamous scene where Uncle Jack flings a fake hand across a courtroom and then proceeds to scream and run across the room to grab the hand. It's something that shouldn't be as funny as it is, really, but Friedman's reaction is hilarious. It's a good thing that Uncle Jack has remained as comical as he has over the years, too, because the character's potential pedophile tendencies are super creepy.
'Nobody look! Nobody look!'
On "It's Always Sunny," Uncle Jack is Charlie's (Day) uncle and a lawyer, and he's one of the show's most insecure characters. (On this show, that's really saying something.) He is especially insecure about his hands, which he believes to be too small — something that has led to a whole bunch of weird moments over the years where he tries to convince people that his hands are larger than they really are. In "McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century," Uncle Jack has big rubber hands that he's wearing over his real hands, and in a moment of gesturing, he launches one of them and has to go retrieve it. When asked about how many takes it took to get that moment right, Friedman shared that it was definitely trial-and-error, stating that Day added to his performance:
"Oh man — those hands were so hard to land right. They were duct taped on and had to be loose enough to fly. I think we did that scene 4-5 times. Some takes it landed too short. Some too far. [At] first I was just yelling, 'Nobody look!' Then, I improvised running to get the hands and put them back on. But THEN — Charlie directed me to amp it up. So I started screaming it over and over again. It was some brilliant direction. AND they landed so well on that final take."
The final result is stupendously funny because it's great to laugh at Uncle Jack's misfortune, and it's all so ludicrous!
Thank goodness he's ridiculous
There's something truly sinister about Uncle Jack, who in all likelihood molested Charlie as a child, but he's portrayed as so utterly pathetic and ridiculous that it's fun to laugh at him. There are moments where the joke gets pushed just a hair too far, but maybe one day Charlie will get his uncle thrown in prison using his own (bird) law skills. Either way, Uncle Jack is at his funniest when he's at his most asinine, and Day directing Friedman to ramp up the absurdity as much as possible was definitely the right way to go.
Friedman is the perfect performer for Uncle Jack because he doesn't try and make him any creepier than the writing already suggests, instead focusing on his flaws and insecurities. He's a pathetic kind of predator, a risible mirror to Dennis (Glenn Howerton) who preys on adult women but hides his fragile ego a bit better. There's no telling how Uncle Jack might show up (or if he'll show up at all) in future seasons, but at least his "NOBODY LOOK!" is an all-timer.