They needed his sunny disposition
As Louie De Palma on “Taxi,” Danny DeVito embodied the guy audiences loved to hate – a crude, obnoxious boss who would torment his employees with sadistic glee.
Some 23 years later, DeVito, 61, is back as a TV-series regular, playing another loathsome-yet-lovable role in the FX network comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (Thursdays, 10 p.m., cable channel 53 in Spokane, 65 in Coeur d’Alene).
Just how bad is his character on the show, Frank Reynolds, compared to Louie?
“I don’t think Louie was a creep. And I think Frank is a really honorable man,” DeVito deadpans before bursting into laughter.
Apart from a memorable cameo on “Friends,” doing a striptease, DeVito has stayed away from TV series work since “Taxi” and concentrated on movies.
His credits include roles in “Romancing the Stone,” “Twins” and “Batman Returns.” He also executive-produced “Pulp Fiction” and directed “Hoffa” and “War of the Roses.”
But all the while, DeVito says, he’s been craving a return to a sitcom.
“I was always looking for something that was exciting, something to give me the juice to be with actors on a stage,” he says.
“Sunny,” which had its second-season premiere last week, centers on four self-involved friends pushing 30 – Mac, Dennis, Charlie and Sweet Dee – who run a dive bar.
DeVito enters the fray as Dennis and Sweet Dee’s estranged father, Frank, who barges into their lives after announcing that he and his wife (Anne Archer) are getting divorced.
Frank wants to bond with the kids he all but ignored for 30 years. He wants to give away all his money to charity and live a simpler life. But most of all, it seems he really wants to just hook up with young, hot women – often at the expense of the younger guys.
“The Danny character was an expansion of these characters’ world. You get to see a little bit of where these people came from and, unfortunately, a sense of where they’re going to end up,” says Rob McElhenney, who plays Mac and also is an executive producer and writer.
DeVito came across “Sunny” last year when longtime associate John Landgraf, FX president and general manager, sent him copies of the show. He loved it, and soon McElhenney was at his door, asking him to join the cast.
“I said I would do it like if the character was organic and didn’t feel tacked on,” DeVito says. “Once I heard what they wanted to do and that they were going to write this character of Frank Reynolds and how it was going to fit into the mix, I was sold.”
Unlike “Taxi,” “Sunny” airs on a cable channel, and its edgy style and profanity-laced dialogue requires a viewer warning.
That and the fact the show is not taped before a studio audience, but shot like a short film – with much of it improvised – had DeVito licking his acting chops.
He says his co-stars are “free, open, inventive, talented, creative, everything. They think about story, they think about character and they like to have a lot of fun. And those ingredients are exactly what I’m looking for.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Katherine Helmond (“Who’s The Boss,” “Soap”) is 72. Actress Shirley Knight is 70. Musician Robbie Robertson is 63. Singer Huey Lewis is 56. Actress Edie Falco (“The Sopranos”) is 43. Rapper RZA is 37.