Olivia Munn Says a Phone Number Mix-Up Prevented Her from Appearing on ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’
Many special guests have dropped by Philly’s grimiest dive bar during It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s 17 seasons, a star-studded list that includes Dax Shepard, Alexandra Daddario, Jason Sudeikis, Guillermo Del Toro, Keegan-Michael Key and even Sinbad and Rob Thomas, who played themselves in Season Four’s “Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life.”
A shift at Paddy’s Pub, however, is conspicuously absent from Olivia Munn’s filmography, a gap she says is thanks to a two-digit mix-up — one that still “kills” her — roughly 20 years ago.
Long before she made audiences laugh as a correspondent on The Daily Show, flexed Sloan Sabbith’s two PhDs on The Newsroom and managed to best her husband John Mulaney for the superlative of “the fun parent” to their two children, Munn was a young actress just getting her start in Hollywood, “auditioning, auditioning, auditioning,” as she recently told Andy Cohen on his Radio Andy SiriusXM show.
Don't Miss
After attending a bunch of castings, Munn finally managed to land one of her first roles, playing an anti-abortion protester on an early episode of It’s Always Sunny. “It wasn’t just a one-line thing, it was a little scene,” the Magic Mike alum recalled of her part, one that was likely for Season One’s “Charlie Wants an Abortion.” “They called me, and I booked it. So excited.”
But this excitement quickly turned to anxiety as just three days before her scheduled Monday morning shoot, Munn’s then-manager, who was “busy filming and starring in his own movie,” had yet to send her any concrete details about her would-be It’s Always Sunny debut. “I call, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll get it, you’ll get it,’” she remembered of her call to her manager’s office the Friday before her almost-gig.
Despite these promises, Munn had not received a call sheet by early Monday morning, prompting the actress and another actor pal to take matters into their own hands, tracking down the production’s phone number. “They were like, ‘Where are you?’” Munn explained of her phone call to the It’s Always Sunny set. “I said, ‘I’m here waiting, I’m ready to go,’ and they go, ‘Well, we’ve been calling you!’”
Considering the radio silence on her end, Munn pressed further, asking them to clarify what number they’d be so desperately trying to reach. “My number at the time was 0608,” she continued. “They put it as 0806.”
With this phone number mix-up now resolved, Munn sprang to action, promising to “drive so fast” to the set. Unfortunately, it was too late. “They were like, ‘We had to audition the extras, and so we’ve already cast it,’” the actress said. “I hung up the phone, and I cried.”
After roughly two decades and one very painful encounter with an ad promoting the episode — “not only did somebody else do it, they were in all the commercials and the advertisements for it,” Munn said of the marketing campaign around the episode — Munn claims she still hopes to eventually make it onto the long-running sitcom. “Being on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still a thing for me,” she concluded. “It’s all I want.”
Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton, you know what to do.
