-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.