For years Glenn Howerton has had this recurring dream. “I’m on a longboard, and I’m really good at it.” he says. “Like really, really good. And I don’t know why.” In the dream he’s cruising around Venice—not the Italy one, the Los Angeles one—where he’s lived for 18 years now, first sharing an apartment near the beach with Rob McElhenney, his TV roommate and co-creator of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where they wrote early scripts together using a cardboard box as a desk, and now in a house with his wife, Jill, their two kids, and, presumably, non-collapsible furniture. Howerton and I are sitting in Venice now too, drinking rose at three in the afternoon (LA!) in an open air restaurant next to a huge Fleetwood Mac mural (more LA!), approximately “30 seconds” away from Howerton’s family home. He drove his Tesla here even though he totally could have walked (most LA!).
But back to the dream. In my book, recurring dreams should be haunting. Like, your father pulls up on horseback and tells you he’s disappointed with your career path. Or you realize you actually don’t know how to balance on an extra long skateboard and catapult through a storefront window. Where’s the cruel twist? The subconscious sabotage? Howerton shrugs. “I’m just riding around and it feels good,” he says, almost apologetically. “I feel free. It’s a very pure dream.” And it’s one he literally made come true, by the way. After so many of these joyous night visions, he finally bought a longboard during the pandemic and… turns out he was naturally good at it. He longboards around his neighborhood now for a half an hour most days as a little afternoon treat. A way to “get some sunshine.”
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On the whole, Howerton seems purer than a typical comedy bro. He’s not chewing the scenery, constantly pouncing with the punchline. A few minutes after we clink glasses he warns me, good-naturedly, “You’re not going to get anything pithy from me.” Maybe it’s naive to assume comedy guy = comedy personality. That’s what “acting” is for, after all. But also counterpoint: The road from Seth Rogen to Seth Rogen character seems easily walkable. Howerton, on the other hand, is nothing like his scheming, legitimately sociopathic Always Sunny character Dennis. On a scale of George Carlin to the Dalai Lama, Howerton’s vibe is much closer to the latter, down to the three beaded bracelets on his right wrist that he plays with while he says something thoughtful—or when he takes a break to think more thoughtfully on the thoughtful thing he’s about to say. At one point he pulls out his phone to look up a 200 word quote on artistic expression from legendary choreographer Martha Graham, then reads it aloud to me. Poetic lines about the artist’s “divine dissatisfaction” and “energy that is translated through the body into action.” Immediately after, he apologizes if that was “douche-y,” because he’s been in comedy long enough to know that actors holding forth on acting can be, well, a little actor-y. Also his eyes? They’re a very bright, sharp blue. The kind of eyes that are so intense that if they weren’t on a famous, handsome person’s face you might think, “Whoa, this guy should be famous” or “Is he trying to recruit me into a cult?”
Howerton is having a bonkers good summer. A career-changing summer, even. After 16 seasons on Always Sunny (which, by the way, still has no end in sight), he debuted in his first starring movie role this May in Blackberry, playing co-CEO Jim Ballsille—a steering-wheel-pounding, hockey-loving business whiz with Friar-Tuck-pattern baldness. There are funny moments, for sure, but essentially it’s a dramatic role. Ballsille, again and again, is pushed up against a figurative wall, and usually ends up throwing a literal deskphone at it.
In the reviews, Howerton’s performance inspired words and phrases like “brilliant” and “steals the show” and “the Glenn Howerton Oscar campaign starts now.” If anyone had ever pigeonholed him as a sitcom guy, the birdhouse has now been smashed open. Though, hat tip to successful sitcom-ing, it was his comedy chops that got him the part. “I wanted someone who was quick on his feet—who can react, improvise,” says Matt Johnson, Blackberry’s writer/director. “Glenn was so much better than somebody from a hard-drama background. I think they would’ve brought a kind of false gravity to that role.”
To play Ballsille, Howerton shaved his head. Not all of it. Just the center dome. Took a razor right down the middle of his very luscious middle-aged man hair almost every shoot morning. It helped him get into character, the ritual of it. But it also inspired a personal revelation. “I did not realize how much I identified with my full head of hair. Deep down, I think I always felt like a guy in his 20s, even though I’m in my mid-40s.” he says. “When I shaved it, it just kinda liberated me. The illusion was gone. I was like, I am a man in his 40’s. A grown ass fucking man… I genuinely liked it.” Though I can’t help but notice his full mane is back now, blowing ever so gently in the four-avenues-from-the-ocean breeze. As if reading my mind, Howerton adds, “My wife did not feel the same way.”
He was the only American on the set of Blackberry, which filmed in Ontario, where the company was founded. “It was almost funny how well he fit in just in terms of his nature, and all around politeness,” Johnson says. (Note: This is coming from a Canadian. The global captains of kindness. The kind of people who bump into a street lamp and apologize.) “He’s the exact opposite of what people expect,” Johnson continues. “He’s this cultured, incredibly polite gentleman who was clearly raised extremely well. He gives grace to everybody he meets. And man, oh man, did I ever appreciate that.”
Really, everyone I spoke to raved about Howerton’s niceness. And not in a milquetoast Oh God, what can I say to this reporter lady about him? way. In more of a it’s so crazy that he’s this good and talented and still genuinely kind way. It’s still a rarity in Hollywood. Even after our big cultural reckoning, a lot of people continue to think acting like an absolute frothing asshole is the best conduit for artistic genius. “He’s just so special,” says Kaitlin Olson, who plays his twin sister Dee on Always Sunny. “I mean, he listens. He’s thoughtful. I think he gets more joy when I make him laugh than vice versa.” She emphasizes that last attribute in a tone like, Can you even imagine? A man! In comedy! Not constantly trying to be the funniest person in the room!
Then she adds the ultimate testament to his kindness: “He’s friends with all of his ex-girlfriends, but not, like, suspiciously.”
It couldn’t be further from what he usually plays on TV. Always Sunny’s Dennis is a full-blown psychopath, a dude who thinks keeping a woman’s head in the freezer is a “preservation of love.” Seventy percent of the hostility on the show is lobbed at Olsen’s character. Does his offscreen personality ever make him second-guess his onscreen behavior? “Oh my God, no,” Olson says. “He goes so hard. And when I start to lose it, he goes even harder.”
There’s a famous scene from season 10 where Dennis threatens to peel Dee and turn her into skin luggage, then cut her into a million pieces and put her into a box. “A glass box,” he clarifies, to display on his mantle. (It’s way funnier on the show.) “If you watch that scene closely, I have tears in my eyes in some of the cuts,” Olson says. “He was making me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants.”
The waitress comes by with the check after we’ve each downed two glasses of pink wine and Howerton has an espresso so he doesn’t go straight home and fall asleep. “My alcohol tolerance is shit these days,” he explains. “I can do two max, and then I’m in bed.”
As we walk out of the restaurant, a 30-something dude in a slightly too tight striped tee waiting at the coffee window does a double take. Howerton doesn’t seem to notice. It’s funny: he told me earlier that he doesn’t feel all that famous. He gets embarrassed even talking about it. Sure, fans come up to him sometimes, but it’s not like it’s hard for him to be out in public. “If I’m famous…” He pauses to cringe. “It’s a select-group-of-people style of fame. I’m not like Tom Cruise. It’s not that everyone-knows-who-I-am type of fame.”
The people who do spot Howerton though, really feel like they know him. They’ve been super fans of Always Sunny for almost two decades— two decades!—since before the iPad existed, back when Kelly Clarkson was a chart topper, not a daytime talk show host.
“When people are big fans of a TV show, it means something different, because you’re literally in their house,” he says. “It’s intimate. People say all the time, ‘Oh my God, my husband and I watch your show every night when we’re going to bed!’ Which could sound, offhanded, like, ‘your show puts us to sleep.’ But it’s a huge compliment to me. That is something Tom Cruise will never understand. He will always be a thousand times more famous than me—this is not a knock on him—it’s just different.”
Widespread fame has its perks though, I argue. I tell him about one of the concierge services available to his ilk, where you send your manager a message and tell them there’s a famous hot person you want to meet. Howertown is nonplussed. “I’ve done the ‘hey I’ve just seen this director’s movie and I loved it, can we get a meeting,’” he says, “but not for social purposes.” I tell him I’d just heard Lizzy Caplan met her husband that way. Saw him in a movie, called her manager and demanded his contact info, then emailed him. “Really? That’s badass,” he says, then adds, “It’d be way creepier if it was the other way, the guy doing that to her. That seems creepy. But if it’s her doing it to him, I’m like, that’s badass.”
Howerton continues to ponder all this: “I just think the world of Ryan Gosling,” he says. “I think he’s fantastic.” I’m encouraging of this idea, and point out that Gosling’s entire persona seems to be a galaxy-resounding I’m down to hang. This is how it happens. “I think he’s a fan of the show, actually? I know he knows the show,” Howerton says.
“So Ryan, if you’re reading this, let’s hang out, buddy.”
Lauren Bans is a writer based in Los Angeles.
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Kevin Amato
Grooming by Thea Samuels