Sophia Michaels
While making the rounds to promote his new Apple TV series Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, Rob McElhenney stopped by Conan where he revealed that he once filmed a sketch for Late Night with Conan O’Brien in the ’90s that never saw the light of day. But the Always Sunny star is mad about it even though he was a struggling actor at the time.
As McElhenney tells it, one day he got a call from his agent for a part that would surely change the course of his career. That part? “Masturbating Teen.” As far as McElhenney can tell, the sketch would have lampooned the advent of satellite TV and its insane plethora of channels, and his character would get “caught in the act” by his mom played by O’Brien. But even while the filming the sketch, and wondering what he’s doing with his life, McElhenney had some concerns about prospects.
“I remember sitting there as this is happening, pretending to masturbate under this comforter, thinking are there adults in charge of this? Are there grown people that think this is going to get on the air? Because I don’t think that it is. Luckily, and again, I went through the process, luckily, better tastes prevailed. It did not make the cut.”
However, O’Brien made it very clear that the sketch wasn’t cut because it was in poor taste, but probably for technical reasons.
“I’d love to say that, ‘Oh no, our bar was too high for that.’ But absolutely not. Absolutely not.”
McElhenney made it clear that he has no hard feelings about the sketch being cut because he was never going to tell anyone about it even though it was one of his first jobs. He didn’t even tell his parents who were always excited to see him on TV, but he’ll keep this one to himself. To which O’Brien responded:
“How do you think I felt with my parents? I was hosting that sh*t the whole time.”
You can watch McElhenney reminisce about the part that got away below:
Written by: Uproxx
