3 days ago
Rob "Rob Mac" McElhenney issues one-minute plea for people to stop caring about his name change
Late last week, we reported on a story circulating in TMZ that was, roughly, 10,000 times less upsetting or scandalous than almost every other story you'll usually see on the pages of TMZ. Specifically, that It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Mythic Quest co-creator Rob McElhenney had filed paperwork to legally change his name to 'Rob Mac,' acting on a re-branding he'd floated a few weeks earlier in a Variety profile of himself and wife Kaitlin Olson.
Now, McElhenney/Mac has publicly confirmed that, yep, he's going through with the change, devoting exactly one minute to a video post he put on social media to address the switch—which he referred to as 'mostly a stage name,' although the TMZ report suggested he was going for the full legal change. Mac sounds alternatively amused and annoyed that people have taken notice of this decision, admitting right up top that the move is 'kind of douchey.' But, he says, he'd rather be that instead of spending the rest of his life correcting people on the spelling and pronunciation of his name, so here we are. (We won't lie: We've had to quadruple check the longer name every time we've typed it out here, and the shorter one zero, so fair cop to that.)
Also, he notes, while he wants to maintain connection with his family, a) most people in his life call him Rob Mac already apparently, and b) his current spelling of his name was the invention of an Ellis Island official anyway, so who even cares? It's only at the end of Mac's quick-running argument that he really loses us: First, with the suggestion that 'there are so many things going on in the world, and this is a silly one to continue to waste your time with'—because, buddy, trust us, the more silly, non-harmful bullshit things we can find to fill our time with right now, the better. And then, the even more spurious suggestion that what he's done is no different from other famous artists adopting stage names, name-checking Gene Wilder, Cary Grant, Lady Gaga, and more—none of whom executed that change after they were already internationally famous, or had put their old name prominently on hundreds of episodes of television! It's apples and oranges, Rob Mac! We'll call you whatever you like, but it's apples and oranges!
Anyway: It's Always Sunny's season 17 premiere arrives on July 9. It's their half of the Abbott Elementary crossover! Rob Mac's in it, should be fun.
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