-I'm very excited
to have you here. I've been a fan of yours
for a long time, and then we met at an Emmys
a couple years ago. -Yes.
-Backstage. Your wife Kaitlin Olson
was presenting. And we met in a bar.
There was a backstage bar. -Well, yes.
So just to be clear, I was at the Emmys not because
I was invited to the Emmys... -Yeah.
-...by the Emmys. -Right. -I wasn't nominated
for anything. But my wife was being asked
to present. -Right.
-And I was invited to the Emmys by my wife.
[ Laughter ] -Any invitation, they say,
is an honor, no matter who it comes from.
-I guess. I promptly went to the bar.
-Yeah. -And spent the majority
of the night there. -It was a very small bar. And it was a lot of fun
to be back there. -It was fun.
-Yeah, it was -- way more fun than being in
the audience for the Emmys. -I wouldn't really know because
I don't spend a lot of time at the Emmys.
-Yeah. -Yeah, that was the only time. -Which, I should say,
is a giant oversight. And I mean this
with all sincerity. "Always Sunny in Philadelphia," coming into its 15th season,
which is incredible. [ Cheers and applause ] The Emmys has a lot of
explaining to do, as far as that goes. -I like to think so.
What year is this show in? -Uh, six. -Oh, you're babies.
[ Light laughter ] Look, if you ever need any
advice in terms of television, I'm happy to walk you
through it. -Thank you so much.
We have something in common, which is we both have
a child named Axel. -Yes. -And how did you come about
your name of Axel? -Well, we live in Los Angeles,
first of all. So...
[ Laughter ] It's really funny because
my kids go to school in L.A. -Yeah. -And there's a lot of very
interesting names. Sky and Pavement and --
[ Laughter ] Springenfall and Wolfenhowl
and things like that. And we were thinking of -- we
wanted to find a strong name. -Yep. -And a name that meant
something to us. And most people think that
we went with Axl Rose... -Yep.
-Because of Axl Rose. And, of course,
I'm a big GNR fan, but that was not our
inspiration. I don't know what your
inspiration was. But ours was something else.
-Which was? -Axel Foley.
-Axel Foley. -Yeah.
-"Beverly Hills Cop." -Which means, like, literally
nothing to anybody under the age of 40.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, exactly.
But that's really good. From "Beverly Hills Cop." -Axel Foley is from
"Beverly Hills Cop." -Yeah, that's great.
-Yes, Eddie Murphy. -There you go. And was your family happy? 'Cause when I told my parents
Axel, I felt like they weren't -- they didn't think it
was awesome. [ Light laughter ]
-Um...no. -Yeah.
-My family was not excited. I come from a very large
Irish-Catholic family in Philadelphia.
-Yeah. -And we are all named Robert
or James or Matthew, Mark, Luke,
or John. And my grandmother,
especially -- and look, very supportive
people. -Yeah.
-My grandmother was, like, "Axel? Well, we'll love him anyway." And I was like,
"Of course you will. Of course you will."
-And what's your other -- your other son is...?
-My other son is Leo. -And is that -- was that
well received? -That went over really well.
[ Laughter ] -Why was Leo so much better?
-Okay, so we originally thought --
first of all, we just picked Leo because we thought it was
a really cool name. A nice name. And my grandmother
was very excited. And I -- she has a brother --
had a brother named Leo. So he would have been
my great uncle. And she was very excited about
the fact that we were -- we believed that we were naming
this child after a family name. And then, so we said,
"You know, Grandma, sure. Whatever makes you happy." And then she said,
"No. No, I'm just happy that you named your son
after the pope, Leo." [ Laughter ] Pope Leo the Grand, I suppose?
I don't know. And I said, "Yeah. Sure.
[ Laughter ] We'll love him anyway."
-Yeah, there you go. You got to give him
what he wants. So this is -- this new show,
"Mythic Quest," this is about the world of
people who basically build video games. -Can I stop you there
for a second? -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -"Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet"
is the title. -Many apologies.
-And here's why. We wanted to make sure
that the title was as ridiculous as possible.
-Yeah. -Just like "It's Always Sunny
in Philadelphia." -Yeah.
-We wanted to make sure we confused as many people
as possible. -Yeah. -And that you could barely
fit it on a poster. -Yeah. -We felt like we had
a good track record as far as that went.
-Yeah, just like bad titles that,
if you market-tested them, it would come back with
a very bad score. -There was a lot of confusion. When people ask me, "What is
the name of your show?, I say, "Mythic Quest."
Then they kind of go, "Okay." And I go, "Raven's Banquet."
[ Laughter ] "What does that mean?
Is that a banquet of ravens? Is it one, single raven
that's gorging upon a feast?" And I'm like, "Look, man,
I don't know." [ Laughter ]
But it doesn't matter because the last one worked so
I'm assuming this one will, too. -Yeah, you got 15 years in you
on this one, too. How did you -- you went
to the world of -- you actually went and visited
a place where they build these sort of open-world
games, yeah? -Yes.
Yeah, so we were approached by this company called Ubisoft,
which is one of the biggest gaming
studios in the world. And they invited me
to come check out this game development studio. And it was really cool.
So we walk in. And originally I was
reticent to want to do a show in this industry
for various reasons. But I was on the fence. But I figured, "Hey, it's a free
trip to Montreal." I'd never been to Montreal.
Let's go drink on their dime. That'll be cool. And so I walk into this
game studio. And I'm looking around,
and I see this guy. And he's like, out, like, across
this -- the hall. And he's dressed
head-to-toe in black. He's got these cowboy boots,
and he's got rings and necklaces
and this long beard. And he had a cane, right? But he was probably 35.
[ Laughter ] And I realized, there was no
limp or anything like that. He was just -- I realized it
was, like, just an accoutrement. Like, a little, like, artistic
flourish that he had. And I walked up to him
and I said, "Hey. Hey, how you doing, pal?"
He said, "Good." I said, "What do you do?" He said,
"I'm a creative director." I said, "I don't know what
a creative director does. What is that?" And he just sort of
took a moment. Like, a longer moment
than he should have. And he, like, looked out into
the distance, which was mostly like
fluorescent lights. And he goes, "Brother, I build worlds." [ Laughter ] And I was like, "Could you excuse me
for one second?" And I walked outside, I took out
my phone, and I called Charlie. And I was like, "We are doing
a show about these people." [ Laughter ]
[ Applause ] -There you go.
-There you go. -Every now and then
you need inspiration. -And that was it.
-Congratulations on that. Congratulations, again,
sincerely... -Thank you.
-...for "Always Sunny." What an incredible run.
So happy it's still going. That's Rob McElhenney,
everybody.
