The Season 12 Scene In It's Always Sunny That Was Too Risky For Danny DeVito
Everyone knows that comedy can be socially dangerous, but what about when it's actually dangerous to a person's health? Physical comedy can require actors to put their bodies on the line in the name of laughs, and that means sometimes a comedian has to know when to take a step back and let a stunt person take the fall instead. After all, aside from maybe Johnny Knoxville, the most adept comedy stars still aren't trained in stunt work and could really hurt themselves. On the long-running FX sitcom series, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," there have been plenty of opportunities for the stars to show off their physical comedy chops and potentially put themselves in harm's way, but there was at least one stunt that was just way too much for septuagenarian actor Danny DeVito.
In an interview with The New York Times, "It's Always Sunny" stunt coordinator Marc Scizak revealed that like co-star Kaitlin Olson, DeVito is almost always down to try and do his own stunts, there was just one season 12 stunt that was way too dangerous for him to even attempt.
The Frank stunt that was just too risky
Here's the thing about Olson doing her own stunts: compared to DeVito, who is in his 70s, she's a relatively young person. She's also impressively clumsy and even injured herself so badly on the "Sunny" set (not even doing a stunt!) that she had exposed bone, so she's likely to end up injured either way. On the other hand, DeVito is a little less accident-prone, but Scizak wanted a stunt double for "The Gang Goes to a Waterpark," in which Frank (DeVito) slides down a massive "Thundergun" waterslide ... sans water. While Scizak chose to have a stunt double do the scene, which ends with Frank getting severe friction burns that rip open his back, he did share that DeVito was still an excellent physical comedian, saying that "Danny's ability to do the physical comedy is pretty amazing. I think if we asked him to, he would have done it."
Maybe Scizak was being a little extra cautious because DeVito had nearly drowned while filming the season finale just one season prior in "The Gang Goes to Hell." In the episode, the gang ends up locked in the brig of a cruise ship when it turns over and the room slowly fills with water. Eventually, they end up with only a few inches of air and decide to go down as a gang, sinking to the bottom together. The only problem? DeVito doesn't sink very well and they had to use weights to help him, which led to a real issue when he tried to swim back to the surface.
One seriously scary slide
It's probably a good thing that they decided to use a stunt double in the end, because that slide is gnarly. In the episode, Frank and Charlie (Charlie Day) decide that they're going to slide down every slide in the waterpark, and when they see a brand-new Thundergun slide based on their favorite movie franchise, they just have to try it. They even ignore an employee who tells them not to, but Charlie thinks a little water from his water bottle will do the trick. Even if the slide was full of water, it would probably be a bit much for a man in his 70s to go down unless he's in exceptional shape. Those slides can be rough on your body because of the physical forces that keep you from flying off, and that's if you don't end up bouncing around the sides.
One of the best sequences in the episode, however, shows Frank and Charlie going down a whole medley of slides, and unless FX suddenly gave "Sunny" a Marvel-sized CGI budget, it's clearly DeVito and Day having a blast riding on them together. Frank and Charlie are one of the best odd couples in television history, and a large part of that is because of DeVito and Day's chemistry, so it's just great to see them having some very real fun. Maybe in season 17, the gang can go to Disney World since Disney now owns FX.