'Always Sunny' creator Rob McElhenney on his pandemic purchase: a Welsh soccer team

Transcript

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Our guest is actor, writer and soccer team co-owner Robert McElhenney. You can currently find him on three shows - "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "Mythic Quest" and "Welcome to Wrexham," the documentary series about the Welsh soccer team he owns with actor Ryan Reynolds. McElhenney spoke last week with Sam Briger. Here's Sam with more.

SAM BRIGER, BYLINE: In 2020, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a Welsh soccer team, or as it's called in Wales, a football club, that was struggling in the lowest tiers of the professional British football leagues. The club is in the town of Wrexham, a city that itself had been struggling. Their idea was to turn the team around, raise its standings, and help out the town. McElhenney has said that Wrexham reminded him of his hometown Philadelphia, a city with its own troubles and a fierce loyalty to its athletic teams - also the home of FRESH AIR. The co-owners and the town and the soccer team's trials and tribulations are the subject of the Emmy Award-winning FX documentary series "Welcome To Wrexham," now in its third season and streaming on Hulu. McElhenney is also an executive producer of the show. In Season 3, Wrexham has successfully moved up a level, which is called being promoted, only to find themselves facing off against better teams and more problems, like their amazing striker Paul Mullin suffering a punctured lung and having to sit out the start of the season.

While not stressing over his soccer team, McElhenney continues to star in "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," the longest-running live action sitcom in TV history, dethroning "The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet," the '50s family show that "Sunny in Philadelphia" couldn't have less in common with. It follows five amoral friends and the destruction and havoc they leave in the wake of their misadventures. He also co-created the show, as well as the Apple TV comedy "Mythic Quest," about the office culture of a video game company. Now, some people have trouble pronouncing Rob's last name, but fortunately, his co-owner Ryan Reynolds has a song to help us out with that.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WELCOME TO WREXHAM")

RYAN REYNOLDS: (Singing) Sure, he's got a pretty face that people know they know. They think they recognize him from his big-time TV show. But despite the accolades, despite the load of fame, one thing that they do not know is how to say his name. Pronouncing all those Ms and Es and Hs can perplex 'em (ph). So here's a little birthday gift from all your mates in Wrexham. It's McElhenney, McElhenney. What ways to massacre and mispronounce it there are many.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: McElhenney.

REYNOLDS: (Singing) It's McElhenney.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: McElhenney.

REYNOLDS: (Singing) McElhenney.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: McElhenney.

REYNOLDS: (Singing) If there was doubt, now there won't be any. It's McElhenney.

BRIGER: That's Ryan Reynolds from "Welcome To Wrexham," singing about his friend, soccer team co-owner and our guest, Rob McElhenney. Rob McElhenney, welcome to FRESH AIR.

ROB MCELHENNEY: Thank you. It is an honor to be here. I have been waiting for this call for almost 20 years. It's such an honor to be here. Thank you.

BRIGER: Well, we're really happy to have you here. Let's start with how you came to have the idea to buy a soccer team in Wales. In the show, it comes across as a pretty casually made decision. I'm imagining it wasn't.

MCELHENNEY: It came at a time in the middle of the pandemic, and I was sitting with my wife on the couch, and we were watching documentaries of anything I could find sports-related. And I was not a - and I can call it soccer right now because we're talking to mostly an American audience. I was not a big soccer fan. Of course, when the World Cup would come around every four years, I would watch that. I would get into that.

But I didn't have a great love for soccer, as it were. But I watched a few documentaries and learned about this system of promotion and relegation, which is a system that is anathema to American sports, meaning, if you lose, if you come in the lower two or three places in any given league, you are literally kicked out of the league and pushed down and out. And then on the other side of that, if a team is in a league below, and they finish in the top two or three, they are promoted to the league above. Then I found out how many leagues there are in British football, and it was somewhere in the vicinity of 18 to 25.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: And I just couldn't believe it.

BRIGER: And there's an analogy made - someone tries to describe how this works like the Yankees, if they just lost and lost and lost and lost, they could find themselves down in a tier like almost playing against Little League teams, right?

MCELHENNEY: That's right. There are leagues in the English football system who are made up of people who have full-time jobs who just get together on Saturdays and play football. And in theory, you could take one of those teams, invest enough capital and build enough infrastructure to take that team all the way from that league - maybe it's League 9, maybe it's League 20 - all the way up to the Premier League.

BRIGER: So you were just intrigued with the idea of trying to do that?

MCELHENNEY: Yes. It was in combination with us being in the middle of the pandemic and recognizing how fortunate we were because of the position that we were in, both my wife and I, and wanting to find ways to give back. When I saw this town who were so in love with the football club - now I have to call it football because that's what they call it. It was actually an English town, and they were so in love with their club that it was clear that their identity was wrapped up in it. And that resonated with me because of my love for the Eagles, the Phillies, the Sixers and the Fliers. And I know what it feels like in the city, when those teams are doing well. You can feel it throughout the city. The entire city is energized. And not only that, there are tangible results that come along with that. There are new markets created. There is a direct impact on the economy.

Like I said, I love sports, and we do pretty well economically, but I could never afford to buy a sports franchise in the United States. However, if there were maybe a smaller organization that we could invest in, maybe we could afford it and that we could get them promoted through the ranks, but most importantly, what we could do is bring hope to a town that had fallen on hard times, just simply through energizing the football club that was at the center of that town.

BRIGER: Right, but...

MCELHENNEY: So that's how it started.

BRIGER: But how did you come to choose Wrexham itself? Did you guys - was someone scouting out potential teams for you?

MCELHENNEY: I had this idea in a moment, and I turned to Kaitlin, who was on the couch with me, and I said, I would like to buy one of these football teams, and I think we could do it. And she said, OK, that sounds good. Do some research. So I just took out a computer and I Googled, how do I buy a sports team?

BRIGER: (Laughter).

MCELHENNEY: And people laugh at that and think I'm not serious, and I'm serious. And what came up was a few articles, one from the New York Times, and it was about this man named Steve Horowitz, who works at Inner Circle Sports in New York City. And I called him. We spoke, and he said, I want to do this, regardless of how, quote-unquote, "small" the deal might be. I believe that there's real value to this. I tasked him with going on a search for clubs.

And the criteria was, find me, please, a working-class town, a working-class club that has fallen on hard times and help me find people who love their team as much as I love the Philadelphia Eagles and the Philadelphia Phillies. And the truth is there were a few clubs that fit that bill. And the rich history part is the most fascinating. This club was originally incorporated in 1864.

BRIGER: Right. Isn't that - it's the third-oldest soccer club. Is that...

MCELHENNEY: It's the third-oldest football club in the world.

BRIGER: Right.

MCELHENNEY: And we play at a stadium called the Cae Ras. And it is the oldest international football stadium in the world. And it was originally built as a race course in 1802. We were talking about a stadium being built during the Thomas Jefferson administration. I mean, it's wild.

BRIGER: Yeah, that's pretty wild. Well, we need to take a short break. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor, writer and soccer team owner Rob McElhenney. He stars in the FX documentary series "Welcome To Wrexham," now in its third season, as well as "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest." We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF HUGH MASEKELA'S "GRAZING IN THE GRASS")

BRIGER: This is FRESH AIR, back with our guest Rob McElhenney, who co-created and co-stars in the comedy shows "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest," as well as the FX documentary series, "Welcome to Wrexham," about the soccer team in Wales he and Ryan Reynolds own.

It's expensive to buy a team, and you felt like although you were doing pretty well from television, that wasn't going to provide enough money to buy a team. So you decided to ask Ryan Reynolds if he would be interested in being a co-owner. Why did you think of him?

MCELHENNEY: I thought of Ryan because we were - we had never met in person, but we were friends via text. And I just - not only did I enjoy his work, I thought that we would vibe. I think we have a very similar worldview. He has got a great reputation. I just think that he is an incredibly ethical person. I know that he is kind. And every interaction that we had via text was always super positive. And, of course, he's incredibly entrepreneurial, so I knew he would understand right away.

BRIGER: Was he game right away? Did you have to convince him?

MCELHENNEY: Yes. I wrote Ryan an email at night. He lives on the East Coast, and I was on the West Coast, and I wrote him an email that was very brief, but it was heart-forward, not business-forward. And I got a call from him, which - he had never called me before - at 2:30 in the morning. And I'd missed it because I was, of course, asleep. But that means it was 5:30 his time. So once I saw that I had a missed call from him at 2:30 in the morning, I knew that he was in. So he read that email, understood exactly what I was going for. And that day, we decided to partner, and from that point forward, we were looking for the right club, and then that's when we found Wrexham.

BRIGER: Now, the documentary does a really good job sort of setting the soccer team, the football club, like, within the context of the town, the people and its history. And we meet a lot of great Wrexhamites, I guess you would say. Like, how did the documentary choose the people to have on the show?

MCELHENNEY: That's a testament to the producers of the show in the field. They just did a fantastic job of going around, going into pubs, going into restaurants and asking, hey, who should I talk to? Who would be interesting? Who's got a great story to tell? And as we all know, as storytellers, the answer to that question is, everybody's got a great story to tell, if you're willing to listen. There's not a human being on this planet that doesn't have a compelling story to tell if you know how to ask the right questions. Whether or not they're willing to open up is obviously a very personal decision and then is up to the interviewer or the journalist, which is the way we were sort of looking at the filmmaking. We wanted to go off and empower those producers, those field producers, to go in with a sense of curiosity and to be asking more questions than giving answers. For a good, long period of time, all we did was listen.

And it was also quite revealing to me about how marginalized the town has been, dating back to Thatcherism, I mean, really, is - they've had a rough go for a good 40 years. It's a coal-mining town. And as we know, in this country, coal-mining towns are going through a very difficult time, and you feel it. In the past, there has been some real sadness associated with that. There was a tragic mining disaster that happened, killing hundreds of people.

BRIGER: It's the worst - isn't it the worst mining disaster in Great Britain?

MCELHENNEY: Yes. And the tragic part of that story - we do a whole episode about it, where I go and visit the memorial and the site with my father. And the vast majority of the men and sometimes boys that were in that mine had tickets to the game the next day in their pockets.

BRIGER: Yeah. When you asked your wife, Kaitlin Olson, like, whether she thought it was a good idea to partner with Ryan Reynolds, she asked you if you thought your ego could handle sharing the space with him.

MCELHENNEY: Yes.

BRIGER: What did she mean by that?

MCELHENNEY: Even worse - I think I've said this publicly, but I don't know if I have. If not, I feel like public radio is the proper place to divulge this information. I had this conversation as I was getting out of the shower, 'cause I was thinking about it in the shower. And I came out and I said, hey, what do you think about this? So I happened to be naked with my wife when I said it, and she was getting ready for work. So, I said, what do you think about me asking Ryan if he wants to be a part of this? And she said, well, I guess that just depends on whether or not your ego can handle sharing a screen with Ryan Reynolds. And I said, you know, it's not lost on me that I'm naked as you're saying that. But she was right.

Really, what the question she was asking was, hey, this is something that's really important to you, and you recognize that by bringing Ryan in, it could very easily become the Ryan Reynolds show...

BRIGER: Right.

MCELHENNEY: ...With that other guy. And it's something I thought not long about, because if I was actually doing what I said I wanted to do, which was to bring the most amount of opportunity for this club to be successful, then I knew having somebody like Ryan would raise the profile exponentially.

BRIGER: It's also funny to see how many Deadpool costumes have been sold in Wales since you bought the team. But let's hear a clip where Ryan Reynolds has gone to Wrexham while you've had to stay behind in the United States, and you're participating in these - some cultural exchanges with people from Wales. And we've edited this clip a little bit, but let's hear it.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WELCOME TO WREXHAM")

MCELHENNEY: He went to Wales without me, and he seems to be having the time of his life. So let me give you an example of the kind of stuff that I'm doing.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Tell me a little bit about what you know about this evening, Rob, what you're doing here.

MCELHENNEY: I am here to celebrate with members of the Welsh government and prominent Welsh people and some other people who live in the area and members of the media St. David's Day.

I'm working. I'm back here in the United States, forging relationships with the Welsh government. I'm trying to open up lines of communication and mutual respect between us and an entire nation.

(APPLAUSE)

MCELHENNEY: (Speaking Welsh).

I'm learning Welsh, for God's sakes. I don't know. I thought it was important to maybe get a better understanding of the country and the people. But apparently, they don't seem to mind, 'cause everywhere he goes, everybody just loves him. Everybody - look at all the smiles and the hugs. Look at the way Mullin's looking at him. For Christ's sake. Let's just go to a commercial. Let's just go to a commercial, but I'm sure it's going to be one of his.

REYNOLDS: Recently, and for no reason at all...

MCELHENNEY: Oh, oh, it is. It is one of his.

BRIGER: (Laughter) That's my guest, Rob McElhenney, and his show, "Welcome To Wrexham." In the show, you sing the Welsh national anthem. And I was just wondering - maybe a stunning rendition of a few lines from the anthem.

MCELHENNEY: (Laughter) I'm definitely not going to sing. However, that was the first thing that I learned because, first of all, it's one of the most beautiful anthems in the world. It's a beautiful song. Something that's really fascinating about the Welsh is that they all sing, men and women. Everybody sings - not necessarily well, but they sing. And I just love that idea, that everybody is an artist. They can express themselves through singing, whether they have the talent or not. And the anthem is just something that galvanizes the entire nation, and I thought I'd have to learn that. But how about this - I'll do a party trick. I learned how to say the longest town name in Europe. It's all one word - Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

BRIGER: That's great.

MCELHENNEY: That's the town. That's the name of the town.

BRIGER: Does that translate into something, or...

MCELHENNEY: No. That's exactly what it is. It's...

BRIGER: That's just the name.

MCELHENNEY: It's just a town name. It's like Philadelphia, which, of course, has roots, has Greek roots, but still is what it is.

BRIGER: You try to visit Wrexham, I think, pretty frequently. I don't know how many times you get to go during the year. But...

MCELHENNEY: I've gone 27 times in 18 months.

BRIGER: Wow. That's a lot. But so unfortunately, for you, you have to watch a lot of games at home. And I was just wondering, is it harder when there's a loss? Is it harder to be at home than it is to be at the race course, at the stadium?

MCELHENNEY: Yes, insofar as when you lose in person, the game is over at around 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon - yeah, usually about 5.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: And so there's less of a day left. For me, I live on the West Coast. The game starts at 7. So if we lose, we have lost...

BRIGER: So you're just bummed out all day.

MCELHENNEY: That's right, and for the rest of the weekend. My children definitely know the difference between Wrexham winning and...

BRIGER: Winning dad and losing dad?

MCELHENNEY: That's right. That's right. But they're so into it, too, and we have our rituals to watch the games. And that's such a huge part of the experience that I really want and I hope that the documentary gets across, because what I hear more than anything over the last three years is people stopping me in the street and saying, I didn't even know I liked sports, let alone soccer. And now I'm a massive Wrexham fan. And to me, that's just a testament to the storytelling. And the whole point of the documentary is to get you to fall in love. It is at its core, a love letter to working-class people. And I wanted people to fall in love with the town of Wrexham, but most importantly, I wanted them to see themselves in the town of Wrexham.

BRIGER: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor, writer and soccer team owner Rob McElhenney. He stars in the FX documentary series "Welcome To Wrexham," now in its third season, as well as in "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest." We'll be right back after a break. I'm Sam Briger, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF HEINZ KIESSLING'S "TEMPTATION SENSATION")

BRIGER: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Sam Briger. We're talking with the actor, writer and soccer team owner Rob McElhenney. He's the co-owner of the Welsh football team Wrexham A.F.C., along with actor Ryan Reynolds. Their odyssey of trying to improve the team's standings while not hemorrhaging money is the subject of the FX documentary show "Welcome To Wrexham," now in its third season and streaming on Hulu. McElhenney is also the co-creator and co-star of the longest running live-action comedy show, "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," with 16 seasons under its belt, and more on the way, and co-creator and co-star in the office comedy "Mythic Quest," which is on Apple TV.

So, Rob, I wanted to talk a little bit about your show "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," which you co-star in and co-created. You're a writer and then you were a showrunner for a while. I don't know if you still are. Is that right?

MCELHENNEY: I am, yes.

BRIGER: OK. So as I said before, "It's Sunny in Philadelphia" (ph) is the longest running live-action sitcom in history, so far. There's 16 seasons. It's about these five friends who own a bar in Philadelphia. Or not all of them on own it, but some do and some work there. And they've often been described in the media as sociopaths, but I think that's unfair to sociopaths.

MCELHENNEY: (Laughter).

BRIGER: The show is about, like, just the destruction they cause in their own lives and others. There might be some people who haven't seen the show, and I was just thinking about how to describe it to them. And I was thinking about the end of "Seinfeld." You know when they're like, those characters are found guilty of basically just being bad people. Like, they're convicted for criminal indifference, for being callow, selfish people, just no good for society. And I think, like, that's where your characters start. Like, that's your baseline.

MCELHENNEY: Yes. "Seinfeld" was a huge influence on me, as was "Friends," interestingly enough. I loved "Friends." And I wanted to make the opposite of "Friends." I just thought it would be a fascinating experiment to see if you could make people truly into the worst versions of human beings - I mean, like, just all id, and if you could get audiences to connect not necessarily with them as people but with the filmmakers and what we were trying to say.

BRIGER: Right, which we'll get to that in a second. But it's - you know, it's pretty remarkable that the main actors have stuck around for 16 seasons. Like, why do you think that is? What do you attribute that to?

MCELHENNEY: We have a criteria we go through every year when FX picks us up. It's just a list that we go down. And we have to check every one of those boxes for us to want to continue to do it. No. 1 is do we still have something to say? No. 2 is is there still an audience that cares? No. 3 - are we having a lot of fun still? Four - are they willing to pay for it? And if all of those boxes get checked, then we come back and do it again.

BRIGER: Now, you said that one of the things in your checklist is, like, do we have things to talk about, but does it become harder, like, as the year has gone on, like, when you're in the writer's room, like, thinking about the season, like, are people saying, oh, we did that in Season 3, we did that in Season 14?

MCELHENNEY: Yes. That happens all the time. But the biggest hurdles that we have to jump over are, you know, we started that show, it seems like yesterday, but I was in my mid-20s, and now I'm in my mid-40s. And so - and also, I am in a completely different place in life. And so it just happens regardless of how you try to protect yourself from this happening. You get insulated. You fall into bubbles of safety. You don't realize it's happening, and then all of a sudden, it's just happened. And I had a moment with Megan Ganz, who is an executive producer on "Sunny," and she is a co-creator on "Mythic Quest" and is a very good friend.

And her very first season on "Sunny" was Season 10. And I remember I was up at the board - the white board, and I was pitching things, and people were laughing. And generally, if you're pitching and people are laughing, you go, great, OK, that goes up on the board, that goes up on the board, that goes up on the board. And who knows what you're going to wind up doing with it, but it seems to be successful because people are laughing. I noticed Megan wasn't laughing. And so afterwards, I called her into my office, and I said, hey, I noticed that when we were going through some of those things, you weren't laughing, and I value your opinion so much, and, you know, we brought you in for your perspective, and I would love to hear your perspective. And she said, no, some of it was fine. It was more that my mind was wandering. And I said, what was it wandering about? And she said, well, I wonder what it would feel like to have a room full of people that you pay laugh at everything you say.

BRIGER: Wow.

MCELHENNEY: (Laughter) And I, of course, laugh, 'cause it was so funny. And also, like, man, what a sledgehammer to...

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: ...The head - right? - that you need to surround yourself with people that are willing to say things like that to you, because I didn't think I was doing that. They were just laughing, right?

BRIGER: But you are their boss, so...

MCELHENNEY: But I'm their boss.

BRIGER: Yeah. That's really interesting. You know, Danny DeVito joined the show in the second season. And he's just such a great comic actor. I was wondering what you might have learned about comedy from working with him.

MCELHENNEY: Oh, I've learned so much from Danny. I would actually put comedy lower on the list only because the things I've learned from Danny in terms of life in general have been so profound in terms of raising children in this business, in the situation that we're in, in the city that we're in, in the culture that we're in, and have changed my life in so many ways, it's hard to quantify. And I've asked him about so many aspects of life and, like, comedy, of course, is a part of it, but I remember even early on, him saying to me - he said, hey, what should I say here? And I was like, oh - 'cause we were, you know, adjusting the lines, and I was like, actually, say whatever you want. And he goes, no, no, no, tell me what to say. And I was like, Danny, you're one of the funniest people in the history of the world, certainly television, I can't tell you what to say here. And he goes, aren't you the writer? And I said, yes. And he said, then tell me what to say.

I came to the show because you are 25, and I'm getting older, and what I think is funny might be old and stale. And I want to keep learning and keep growing and being curious about the world as it evolves. And so I'm going to look to you to help me as I'm on that journey. And what a powerful lesson that is to learn at 25 from a legend, and it's something that I hold sacred and try my best to emulate.

BRIGER: Well, let's take another short break here. Our guest is actor, writer and soccer team owner Rob McElhenney. His documentary series about the soccer team in the town of Wrexham is called "Welcome To Wrexham." It's now in its third season. We'll be right back after a break. I'm Sam Briger, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE BAD PLUS' "THE BEAUTIFUL ONES")

BRIGER: This is FRESH AIR. Back with our guest Rob McElhenney, who co-created and co-stars in the comedy shows "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest," as well as in the FX documentary series "Welcome To Wrexham" about the soccer team in Wales he and Ryan Reynolds bought in 2020.

Rob, you grew up in South Philadelphia. Can you tell us a little bit about what the neighborhood was like when you were a kid?

MCELHENNEY: Yes. I grew up - 1404 East Moyamensing Avenue, which is on the corner of Moyamensing and Dickinson and was around the corner from the house that my mother grew up in. And my grandparents were three houses down. Right next door to us was my great-aunt Josephine and uncle Joe. Up the avenue, all of my mother's brothers and sisters lived with their families. She had nine. And my father was one of 10. And they started also in South Philadelphia, but then slowly matriculated out into Delaware County. So I spent the first 10 year - 11 years of my life in South Philadelphia.

BRIGER: Your parents got divorced when you were around 8 or 9. Your mom came out of the closet. This would have been maybe around 1985, I think. And I think it's fair to say that that wasn't the easiest time to be gay in America and perhaps even more the case in a - maybe a heavily Catholic neighborhood like South Philadelphia.

MCELHENNEY: It must have been tremendously difficult. And we've talked about it quite a bit. And I can try, intellectually and emotionally, to understand what that must have been like for her, but it's impossible. And the grace and dignity and respect and love that they both handled that situation with is mind-boggling to me because when you do the math, they were in their 20s. And I can't imagine - and I've talked to my father about this so many times, and I still can't really quite wrap my head around how he was able to navigate it.

BRIGER: I was even wondering if, you know, at the age of 8 or 9 you even understood what it meant for your mom to be gay.

MCELHENNEY: No. I didn't. I just knew that she was leaving, at least that's what it felt like, and she was leaving for a while. And I don't think that she had identified exactly what was not working for her. She had three kids very quickly and then a very late-term miscarriage. And I think that was a catalyst for a real reckoning of the position that she was in in her life and needed time and space to go figure out who she was and how she wanted to live her life and, of course, without abandoning her children.

And I just remember - and again, I've talked to my dad about this quite a bit and my mom - that my dad said, take the time that you need, and come back when you're ready to come back, and let's figure it out. I just - (laughter) I can't for the life of me understand how a person in their 20s with three children could have that response.

BRIGER: Was it hard for you to be a kid with a gay mom? Like, were you bullied at school for that?

MCELHENNEY: Interestingly enough, no. So what wound up happening was my mother came back and with a partner, Mary Taylor, who she...

BRIGER: ...Who she's still with today, right?

MCELHENNEY: ...She's still with today. She's my - I am - I have so many mothers.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: I have - Mother's Day is a fascinating day.

BRIGER: (Laughter).

MCELHENNEY: I've got my hands full.

BRIGER: That's a lot for flowers, I bet.

MCELHENNEY: It's - yeah. Wow. I have so many mothers. I was - I'm very, very fortunate in that regard. So she came back with Mary and said, this is the person that I love. My mother is really interesting, too, because - I haven't asked her in forever - but I don't even know that she identifies as gay. I don't say, mom - you know, 'cause you're a kid, and I'm trying to, like, put people into categories so I can rationalize it and understand it...

BRIGER: Right.

MCELHENNEY: ...Are you - you're not straight? No. Are you gay? No. Oh, OK. Are you bisexual? No. What are you? And she said to me, I'm an American (laughter). And I thought - I was, like, 15. I was like, that is the coolest answer ever. Basically, like, the - what I took from it was, I identify as an American. And in this country, we have the freedom to be whoever we want, and that's what I'm doing. And I thought, man, that's bada**. Like, yeah, at 15, to have your mother say something like that is really empowering. So from that point forward, she was with Mary, and they still are together to this day.

But your experience at school is really just a function of how your friends react. And I was able to navigate making friends. And I happened to make friends with some of the larger members of the...

BRIGER: (Laughter).

MCELHENNEY: ...Any school I went to. And so that was always helpful...

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: ...Because I - if someone was, you know, giving me a hard time, they would take care of it. And I'm still...

BRIGER: Well...

MCELHENNEY: ...They're still my best friends.

BRIGER: Well, it seems like maybe you picked the right friends, too, at that point, which is...

MCELHENNEY: They were - yes, or they picked me.

BRIGER: Right.

MCELHENNEY: Either way, I have a text chain with them, and I speak with them. And I'm not exaggerating when I say I speak with them every single day. There's about 12 guys. I went to a Jesuit Catholic high school. And I still speak with them every day.

BRIGER: Well, I - something that I've noticed about you, which I think is commendable and probably speaks to your character, but, like, you work with the same people, and you carry people from, like, one project to the next. What do you attribute that to?

MCELHENNEY: Good parents and a great community of people. I was really well educated in the way that I needed to be educated. I needed to be educated by the various schools that I went to. Interestingly enough, I was just diagnosed. I did a full neuropsych exam because a family member asked me to. And I - the information that came back was fascinating, but I was diagnosed with a series of neurodivergencies that I did not expect and a host of learning differences that we used to call learning disabilities, which actually explains a lot. It explains a lot of why certain testing I would do really well in, and then I would be a poor student. And people would call me lazy or dumb or not living up to my potential.

And I was fortunate enough to have a school in St. Joe's Prep that was able to - without diagnosing it, was able to identify what I was good at and what I wasn't and help me through not even a robust LD program, but, like, just accepting me for who I was. I've just been fortunate and surrounded by the best people on earth. So why wouldn't you hold on to them desperately? That's what I do. I find the best people I can, and I hitch my wagon to their stars, and I hold on for dear life.

BRIGER: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor, writer and soccer team owner Rob McElhenney. He stars in the FX documentary series "Welcome To Rexham," now in its third season, as well as in "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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BRIGER: This is FRESH AIR. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor, writer and soccer team owner, Rob McElhenney. He stars in the FX documentary series "Welcome To Rexham," now in its third season, as well as in "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Mythic Quest."

So I just was wondering, you know, South Philadelphia, like coming from that neighborhood, how did the idea of getting into film and television, like becoming an actor, becoming a writer come into your conscience? And you kind of split your time between being a writer and an actor. And I'm just wondering, like, was one, like, the passion first, and then the other one came after that? Or did you think of, like, writing as a way to give yourself acting roles?

MCELHENNEY: I watched so much television growing up and so many movies. We didn't have cable, but we had all the channels you needed at that period of time 'cause it was a great time for television. And I - California was not a real place to me for so long. It was just a place out there, somewhere else in the country, where they made film and television. I never thought, oh, well, this is - would be something that I would do until I hit high school and I realized I was a terrible athlete. And I tried everything. And I would just go out and get crushed at every sport. And I literally tried to play every sport and was terrible at everything.

But because I went to an all-boys school, at one point, one of the girls schools, Notre Dame, made an announcement over our loud speaker saying, we need boys for our plays. Would anybody be willing to come after school and audition for the plays? And I thought, well, I like the odds. I I don't know if I can act, but I know I can't play football or wrestle or play baseball or basketball, so let me give this a shot.

And I did, and I had an absolute blast, and I'm sure I was terrible, but I felt comfortable in front of an audience. And I really enjoyed myself. And so that was my way in to, like, acting. But then I never really thought it would be a profession until I graduated, and I didn't have the grades or the testing to get me into any of the colleges that my friends were going to.

So I was the only kid from my graduating class that didn't go to college. But I thought eventually I would go. It is a prep school, but let me just take - give a year and just go and see if I can figure out how my brain works and why I can't - why I feel like I can keep up with people, but the testing is telling me that I can't. And so I took a year off and I moved to New York. I lived in New York, and I lived at the dorms at Fordham University. And I...

BRIGER: Just with some friends or something?

MCELHENNEY: Just with some friends. Yeah.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: Yeah, just with some friends. This was pre 9/11. So it was actually easy to come and go through the dorm system. And I wound up paying a kid for his meal plan. So his parents had paid for his meal plan, and I paid him 300 bucks, and I got his ID, and so I ate three meals a day for $300 for an entire year. So that seemed like a pretty sweet deal.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: And while I was there, somebody - I tried out for the plays, and somebody said I looked so young. And they were, like, looking for somebody who was 18 to play really young because they could skirt around the laws of keeping somebody there for 12 hours in a commercial. And I wound up booking the commercial. And then I thought, oh, wow, this is a profession. This is something that people do for a living.

And then I went back and looked at all of those names that you would see in the credits and realized, like, oh, yeah. Jerry is not making up these lines as he's going along. George Costanza's is not making up these lines. Jennifer Aniston isn't making up these lines. They're being written for them. They're being created and crafted by other people. I wonder if I could move out to California and be an actor, and if that worked out, great. And if it didn't, maybe - which it didn't - I didn't work forever. And then I just thought, well, what if I just tried to write my own thing? So I did. I wrote a script. That script got optioned.

BRIGER: This is a crazy story because you were, like, a Martin Scorsese fan, and this was like...

MCELHENNEY: Yes.

BRIGER: ...An homage to that kind of movie. It was optioned with Paul Schrader attached to direct.

MCELHENNEY: That's right.

BRIGER: And he was the screen - he wrote the screenplay for "Taxi Driver." Like, that must have blown your mind.

MCELHENNEY: It was wild. I mean, I went from working in a bar on the Upper West Side as a barback. I wasn't even old enough to be bartending. I was barbacking. And we sold this script, and then I was working with Paul, who, yeah, most famously wrote "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull." And I got a real taste of the movie business. It's not even specific to Paul. It just takes a very long time. And you're always at the mercy of whoever it is that's in charge. And in that case, it was Paul, and he would say, write this, try that, write this, write this, write that, write this. And this went on for months and months and months and months. And about a year passed.

And finally, I said to Paul, like, man, I've been doing so many rewrites on this. What do you think is going to happen? He goes, well, I'll probably rewrite the whole thing anyway. And I'm going to stop, and I'm going to go do this other movie that's going to take me two years. So I'll get back to you.

BRIGER: Yeah.

MCELHENNEY: And I was like, I never want to go through this again. The only way that we can have a little bit of creative control and agency over our experience is if we make it ourselves. And that's when I brought - I said to Charlie, hey, what if we try to make something on our own? And that's what we did.

BRIGER: And that was "Sunny In Philadelphia."

MCELHENNEY: That's it.

BRIGER: Now, what was the commercial you booked? Do you recall?

MCELHENNEY: There was a series of them that I did right in a row. One was for Mitsubishi. One was for Yoo-Hoo. And then the thing that was the most lucrative, and this is how nuts the business is - I was walking through a recording studio, very much like this, on my way to go somewhere else, and somebody said, hey, kid, come here real quick. Can you just sign this release? I said, sure. They said, do you want this gig? It won't pay much. I said, yeah, I'll take anything. They said, say this into the microphone three times 'cause we need a young voice, because they had just had somebody come in, and they needed to speak to a younger audience, and it was this. 1-800-COLLECT - save a buck or two.

BRIGER: (Laughter).

MCELHENNEY: I said it three times and left. I then started getting checks for that that paid more than anything else I had ever done up until that point combined. And it just shows you how wild the entertainment industry can be and how feast or famine it is. Thousands of dollars that would come in for just saying those words like that because it was a national campaign.

BRIGER: Wow.

MCELHENNEY: And I just knew I couldn't rely on things like that. I knew at some point I had to take agency over my own experience.

BRIGER: Well, Rob McElhenney, thank you so much for being on FRESH AIR today.

MCELHENNEY: It's been a true honor. Thank you for having me.

MOSLEY: Rob McElhenney, speaking with Sam Briger. The finale of the third season of "Welcome To Wrexham" is on June 13. On tomorrow's show, investigative reporter Alexia Fernandez Campbell joins us to talk about newly discovered records that show after the Civil War, some freed men and women were given titles to land as part of the nation's promise of 40 acres and a mule. But after President Lincoln's death, the land was taken back. I hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.

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MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.