Where The It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Ireland Scenes Were Actually Shot

The gang on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" spend most of their time at Paddy's Pub and rarely leave Philadelphia, but in season 15, Charlie (Charlie Day), Frank (Danny DeVito), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), and Mac (Rob McElhenney) travelled all the way from Philly across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland. Over the course of four absolutely bonkers episodes, the gang shared their special brand of American awfulness all over the Emerald Isle, but did the cast actually film there? 

Though some of the cast would eventually travel to the "monkey beer island of green and fight" to create and promote their whiskey, Four Walls, it turns out that the Ireland scenes in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" were mostly filmed in ... Northern California. Due to restrictions around travel during the early days of Covid, filming in Ireland was just completely off the table, but thankfully there was some coastline in the U.S. that could stand in for the cliffs of Ireland to some degree. Since most of the series is filmed in Los Angeles with only the rare shoot in Philly, that just meant a little trip north, a hint of set dressing, the occasional green screen, and a bit of help from Mother Nature. 

While some of the Ireland scenes, especially interiors, were likely filmed in Los Angeles, the big outdoor sequences were apparently filmed in Bodega Bay, California, about two hours west of Sacramento. While that's not exactly an ideal match, the weather ended up cooperating and made the northern California locale look a lot more like Ireland. DeVito told Entertainment Weekly about the production's good luck, saying:

"California's got the great weather, we love it and all that, but we were looking for something unique. That's why we wanted to go to Ireland, with its really cool hills and cliffs. We went to Bodega Bay instead, but what happened is we had three days of fog. Oh my god, it was so great for the show. It gave you that feeling of being on the Emerald Isle and that bad weather. It really worked out for us."

The season 15 finale sees Charlie having his most emotional moment yet after the gang splits apart while carrying his dead father up a hill for a funerary rite, and all of that fog absolutely makes the episode and the heavy sequence work. Bodega Bay has plenty of rocky cliffs, but the fog is a final touch that actually makes the California landscape look a bit more like Ireland. Filling in the episodes with a bit of b-roll footage from a team in Ireland helped sell that authenticity, and all together, it feels like the gang actually went to Mac and Charlie's ancestral homeland. Since Los Angeles has done a lot of filling in for Philly during shooting, it's almost appropriate that the show's Ireland isn't actually Ireland. At least the guy playing Charlie's dad, Shelley Kelly, was the very Irish Colm Meaney, so all that Gaelic he and Charlie speak doesn't sound like total gibberish.