Quinta Brunson Admits to Rob McElhenney That She Pirated ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ in College

Even entertainment magnates like Quinta Brunson can’t resist the allure of StolenMovies.free.

This Wednesday, January 8th, at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC, the mid-season premiere of Abbott Elementary will show traditional TV viewers what happens when the miscreants, degenerates and alleged sex criminals of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia step foot in the most charming and underfunded public school in Philadelphia. Then, presumably, at some point soon after the legitimate airing, the episode will be available for illegal streaming in 144p resolution on various websites that sell ad space to gerontophilic dating apps and Russian online casinos.

As successful creators like Abbott Elementary’s Brunson and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia head Rob McElhenney know all too well, online piracy is the scourge of the modern entertainment industry, and it shapes what kind of projects get produced in 2025. For instance, without it, we may never have gotten the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia/Abbott Elementary crossover.

In a recent joint interview with Los Angeles Times, Brunson admitted to her new partner McElhenney that she only ever became a fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when she started illegally torrenting the show. Maybe that’s why Abbott Elementary will forever stay TV-PG.

During the talk, the L.A. Times’ Esther Zuckerman asked Brunson about her first experience with Always Sunny, and the Emmy darling admitted that, despite being a born-and-raised Philadelphian, she couldn’t get into the comedy until her college years. “Even though I was from Philly, I hadn’t actually watched,” Brunson said of her partner sitcom. “I came from a very Christian background where that show just could not have been on in my house. So it wasn’t until college — my freshman year in college — and I was in a dorm with my friend Lauren, who is (the person with whom) I discovered all my oddball humor things.”

“We were big into Adult Swim, just the things we weren’t allowed to watch at home,” Brunson said of her new, unbridled, TV-MA taste in television. “And (Lauren) was like, ‘Have you ever watched Always Sunny?’ I was like, ‘You know what, despite being from here, no, I haven’t.’ We binged, and it was hard to binge at that time,” Brunson said of her unrestricted, unlicensed Always Sunny watching spree. “We’d torrent — sorry — the show from a website nonstop.”

Said Brunson of her experience binging her city’s then-biggest sitcom, “I couldn’t stop, and I thought it was insane and amazing. It made me proud.” 

But not proud enough to pay for cable, of course.

Regardless of how she got into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brunson’s formative experience with the show led to her pursuing a pure Philadelphian crossover event many years later once she was a TV-maker herself, and, whether or not piracy is “stealing,” as a certain Thundergun 4 producer would claim, in this case, the ends justify Brunson‘s less-than-legal means.

Thanks to Brunson‘s piracy, all of Philadelphia will get to watch Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia come together — on their phones. Five tickets for the price of zero, please.