Charlie Day Is Glad He Never Quit ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Now That Comedy Movie Jobs Don’t Exist Anymore
According to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Charlie Day, working on the same TV show for 20 years is immensely more preferable than just strapping on his job helmet, squeezing down into a job canon and firing off into job land, where mid-budget comedy movies still exist.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is coming up on two decades of TV excellence later this year, a legendary run that’s provided its stars and staff with a literally unprecedented level of job security in the history of situational comedy. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 17 is scheduled to premiere on July 9th when the Abbott Elementary cast comes to FX for the second part of their crosstown crossover, and Day has indicated that he and his co-stars Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton are already starting to schedule production on Season 18, with the future of the show apparently secure for as long as FX wants to keep cranking out new episodes.
Back in Season 12, Always Sunny broke the record previously held by Frasier for the longest-running live-action sitcom in American TV history, and, according to Day, that superlative longevity has allowed the show to survive even longer than the American comedy film, a movie species that was once abundant but now exists only in DVD archives and a select few zoos where they refuse to breed.
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During his appearance on Andrew Santino’s golf podcast No Bad Lies, Day said that he’s glad he “didn’t quit my TV day job” now that the types of comedy acting gigs that enticed him before Always Sunny began have since gone the way of Wade Boggs, may he rest in peace.
When speaking on the show’s unnaturally long life, Day expressed his gratitude for the continued and unusually long-lasting success of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. “In this town, when you get the opportunity to do something, you take it,” Day said of his life in Hollywood, adding of Always Sunny’s endurance, “Plus, it’s been great for me, I don’t know, it’s kept me in town. … I’m getting on the back half of raising a son, I’ve been around, he knows who I am.”
As Day pointed out, that kind of stable home life is harder to come by in the movie business. “There was a time when there were a lot of big comedy movies happening, and I thought, maybe I was going to be on the road more often, and then those just kind of dried up, so I’m glad I didn’t quit my TV day job, you know?” Day reflected.
Back in 2005, when It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia first began, the most successful non-franchise, non-adaptation movie at the American box office was the R-rated comedy Wedding Crashers with $209 million, and other classics such as the Adam Sandler-starred remake The Longest Yard and Judd Apatow’s iconic abstinence comedy The 40-Year-Old version also enjoyed nine-figure sums in ticket sales. But in 2024, the only comedies to eclipse $100 million at the domestic box office were Despicable Me 3 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, both of which rode the success of past films during bygone eras of box-office prosperity to their healthy returns.
Meanwhile, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still one of the most popular shows on television, and FX is happy to give Day and his co-stars a blank check to keep the party going. Clearly, Day made the right career decision sticking to his successful TV work instead of leaving Always Sunny to try and save the movie business, but he didn’t need to look at the box office returns to know that — he saw what happened to Thunder Gun 4.
