You might already be calling It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney ‘Mac,’ after watching his beloved character on the raucous comedy series for a whopping 16 seasons (with another now on the way). He is Mac to many of us — and now, the comic has revealed why he will be known as Mac legally as well.
“As our business and our storytelling is expanding into other regions of the world and other languages in which my name is even harder to pronounce, I’m just going by Rob Mac,” McElhenney said while alongside creative partner Ryan Reynolds for an interview with Variety in May. And now, as of last week, the actor has filed to make the name change legal, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed.
McElhenney has explained that after purchasing the Wrexham Football Club with Reynolds in late 2020 — a venture that can be seen chronicled in the pair’s FX docuseries Welcome to Wrexham — his work with the team led his production company, More Better Productions, to invest in football clubs (you know, also known as soccer, in case that wasn’t clear) in South America. And it’s there that his name has ended up being a pronunciation hurdle with Spanish speakers, which inspired him to make the change.
It got to the point where McElhenney’s surname was such a conversational challenge within their work that Reynolds debuted a hilarious song highlighting the problem while celebrating Mac’s birthday in April 2023. “Pronouncing all those Ns and Es and Hs can perplex ’em,” Reynolds sang alongside both celebrities and local friends of the football club in the number. “So here’s a little birthday gift from all your mates in Wrexham.”
That said, the decision doesn’t just affect McElhenney, it’s also a change for his family. “The kids are really not happy about it, because they have that last name,” It’s Always Sunny star Kaitlin Olsen — who McElhenny married in 2008 and has two children with — also told Variety. “And so do I, legally!”
At the end of the day, we’re just excited to be able to legally call him Mac forever now. It’s a win for the people.
Season 17 of It’s Always Sunny arrives on FXX on July 6.
Image credit: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
