Who is Mac in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

Show

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Played by

Rob McElhenney

First episode

“The Gang Gets Racist”Season 1, Episode 1, aired August 4, 2005

Role

Main cast

Network

FX

Occupation

Paddy's Pub co-owner and self-styled bouncer

Show run

2005 to presentMoved from FX to FXX in 2013.

Also known as

Ronald McDonald, McDonald

Mac co-owns Paddy's Pub and insists he is its bouncer, a martial arts master, and the toughest guy in South Philadelphia, though none of it holds up for long. Played by series creator Rob McElhenney, he is the gang's most self-deluded member, and his slow road to coming out became one of the show's most surprising arcs.

On It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mac's story runs through Charlie Kelly (Best Friend), Dennis Reynolds (Roommate), Frank Reynolds (Adoptive Father), Dee Reynolds (Coworker), and The Waitress.

Who is Mac?

Mac is Charlie's best friend from childhood and, for most of the series, Dennis's roommate, and the three of them bought Paddy's Pub together. He calls himself the bar's head of security, which mostly means standing around and talking about how dangerous he is. His father, Luther, is a convicted felon who barely acknowledges him, and his mother pays him even less attention.

For years nobody knew Mac's real name. The season seven episode "The High School Reunion" finally reveals it: Ronald McDonald. Like the rest of the gang he drinks too much and schemes constantly, but what drives Mac most is a desperate wish to be respected, especially by Dennis and by his father.

Personality and comedy

Mac's comedy comes from the distance between who he says he is and who he obviously is. He performs karate moves for no one, flees real fights, and lectures the gang about his Catholic faith while ignoring most of it. He is also the gang's most enthusiastic rule-maker, forever explaining the right way to run a scheme that is already falling apart.

The show uses his body as a running gag, too. In season seven Mac has gained a lot of weight and calls it cultivating mass, and later he becomes extremely muscular. Both transformations were real: McElhenney put on about 60 pounds for the first and trained for months to get ripped for the second.

Key storylines

From early on the show hints that Mac is gay and in denial, starting with his secret relationship with Carmen, a trans woman he meets in season one. He comes out briefly during the gang's Christian cruise at the end of season eleven, then takes it back, and comes out for good in season twelve's "Hero or Hate Crime?"

Coming out does not fix Mac's insecurities. In "Mac Finds His Pride," the season thirteen finale, he struggles with what kind of gay man he is supposed to be and how to tell his father. He answers with a long, wordless interpretive dance performed for Luther in prison, a sequence that stunned viewers who knew the show mostly for its cruelty. In season fifteen he even flirts with joining the priesthood during the gang's trip to Ireland.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Rob McElhenney created It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and shot the first homemade pilot with his friends Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day. He has written, produced, and starred in the show ever since, and beginning in season seventeen he is credited as Rob Mac. He is married to Kaitlin Olson, who plays Dee.

The dance in "Mac Finds His Pride" is often named among the best scenes in the show's long history, and it marked a turning point in how critics talked about the series. With its fifteenth season the show became the longest-running American live-action sitcom by number of seasons.

Mac: frequently asked questions

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