Movies - TV
Why It’s Always Sunny’s Characters Don’t Have Philadelphia Accents
By DANIELLE RYAN
The characters on “It’s Always Sunny” are all Philadelphia natives who have lived in the city for their entire lives, but interestingly, none of them speak with a Philly accent.
On the “Always Sunny Podcast,” the show’s stars, Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, and Glenn Howerton, revealed why the characters don’t speak with traditional Philly parlance.
It turns out that the Philly accent is really unusual and not only would it be difficult for the actors to nail it, but audiences might not believe it’s real.
Day explained, “‘We were debating, do we do the accents or not? And we’re like, people won’t know what the f*** we’re doing. They’re gonna be like, ‘What is this?’”
The solution was to choose specific words to use the accent with, and sharp-eared fans can catch that unique Philly twist on those pronunciations, such as “birds” and “hoagie.”
There is one actor on “It’s Always Sunny” that goes “in and out of” a Philly accent from season to season, and that’s Danny DeVito, who plays Frank Reynolds.
In the podcast, Day said that he noticed DeVito “ramped it up” in Season 16, bringing more of the Philly flavor to his dialogue than he had in previous seasons.