Although it belongs to one of the creators of depraved sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there is nothing particularly funny about Rob McElhenney’s office, a bland, sparsely decorated room in the corner of a bungalow on the CBS studio lot in Los Angeles. As I wait for him to arrive, in the last days before the coronavirus pandemic shuts down productions across Hollywood, my eyes are drawn to the only unusual feature in the room: a doorbell-sized button built into the desk.
A moment later McElhenney breezes in, walks behind the desk and presses it. Across the room, the door swings silently closed. “When we saw it,” he says, grimacing as he takes a seat on the couch, “we were like: ‘Oh God, this is from a bygone era.’” It’s the sort of sinister tech Always Sunny’s creepy Dennis might employ; indeed, the same kind of button was cited in the 2017 sexual assault allegations against former NBC news anchor Matt Lauer.
Megan Ganz, co-creator of McElhenney’s new show for Apple, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, found an identical button in her office next door. “We were making jokes about how wholly inappropriate they are, but then Meg was like: ‘I use it all the time!’ You realise the button that closes the door is not the issue. The one that locks the door, that’s the problem.”
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 