Danny DeVito and Carol Kane on Reuniting on Screen in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

[The following contains spoilers for the Season 17 finale of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Golden Bachelor Live."]

When Danny DeVito and Carol Kane join a Zoom meeting, it's like they are the only two people in the internet equivalent of the room.

Kane immediately announces to her former Taxi co-star and longtime friend that she made sure to put on makeup before logging in to the chat: "I spruced up as much as I could for you, my darling."

"Oh, how are you, my sweetheart?" DeVito responds. "I'm happy to see you."

They chat about DeVito's thick, black eyeglass frames. (Kane: "I love your glasses, D. What are they?" DeVito, after taking them off to examine the label: "Tom Ford." Kane: "He's so stylish. Excusez-moi.") They mention Kane's 98-year-old mother, Joy, a composer and piano instructor who recently counseled DeVito about his current efforts to start playing piano again after giving it up as a child. 

"I'm trying to tinker around on the keys, and I've talked to her and she's so wonderful," DeVito says. "I've known her forever." 

DeVito and Kane have known each other not quite forever, but going on five decades. Which is close enough. They first appeared on screen together in the 1977 comedy The World's Greatest Lover alongside director and star Gene Wilder and, more famously, on the 1978-1983 sitcom Taxi, where Kane played Simka, the girlfriend and eventual wife of Andy Kaufman's mechanic Latka, and DeVito was surly dispatcher Louie De Palma. The two have remained in touch, as have all the principal members of the Taxi cast. But Kane and DeVito hadn't shared the screen together until they professionally reunited for this week's Season 17 finale of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a crossover episode in which DeVito's Frank Reynolds is cast as the new Golden Bachelor and becomes unexpectedly smitten with one of the reality show's contestants, Sam (Kane). Well, Frank being Frank, he becomes unexpectedly smitten only after he forces the Golden Bachelor producers to change the rules and allow younger women to compete.

Kane was excited to work with DeVito and her friend Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Charlie Day's character's mother on It's Always Sunny and died earlier this year of cancer. But as Kane and DeVito explain during a conversation that covers their experiences together on It's Always Sunny and Taxi, they had to get the blessing of Kane's mother, who was "horrified" by the script for the season finale of the grimiest (complimentary!) comedy on television.

Danny, had you been talking to Carol about potentially being on It's Always Sunny? How did this casting come about?
Danny DeVito: There are people I love to work with, and Carol is in that group. She's my dear friend, but we hadn't really discussed that. The way it came up was that Charlie [Day] and Glenn [Howerton] and Rob [Mac] had been talking to me about these crossover [episodes]. Honestly, I never saw The Golden Bachelor. 

Kane: Me neither. When I read this project, I thought they made it up.

DeVito:  Then it came up and I read the script and they were talking about brilliant actresses. And I knew the most brilliant. So we snagged Kane. 

Kane: I was so honored and so excited. Then my mother read the script when it came in. She was so horrified by how dirty it was. She said, "Honey, why would you do this?" I said, "Mommy, it's Danny." She read the writing and was just shocked.

When you told her Danny was involved, did that help?
Kane: Of course. 

DeVito: She knows that I wouldn't do anything to harm her precious.

Carol, did you know any of the other folks from It's Always Sunny other than Danny?
Kane: I just met them on the set. I must say — the episode is dedicated to Lynne Marie Stewart and Lynne, I did know. Because I knew Paul Reubens quite well and so I had known Lynne Marie Stewart for a long time. We were so happy to work together, and we talked about Paul, who she got to see in the hospital. I didn't, but Lynne did. I must say having Danny and Lynne in the same frame was such a precious time. You asked me about the other people I had never met, but I must say they were so welcoming and kind and thoughtful. 

DeVito: They are always like that, but especially they were. The show is very open and warm and they're really good individuals. Having you there was spectacular. We just had so much fun.

Did you do any improvising in your scenes or were you sticking pretty close to the script? I'm thinking especially about that dinner scene when Charlie's mom walks in and Charlie starts throwing stuff.
DeVito: We do a lot of takes. Carol, do you remember exactly?

Kane: I think we were free to improvise and maybe we did a little around the edges, but my recollection is that basically, it was scripted. The writing's good writing, you know? So you're free to futz around in a jazz sort of way. I do remember the last take was pretty crazy, remember? With all the things flying around off the table and everything. That had to be the last take because the whole table was kind of broken.

DeVito: Every day was just off-the-charts fun. I just had a ball doing that. It's a gift to be on the show and be able to do what Carol was saying. They're writing great stuff for you and for the episodes, but you're also free to, you know, fart around a little bit. 

Kane: I didn't use that word, Danny. I want to go on record. I'm way too classy to have used that word.  

DeVito: You are. I think she enjoys that. I know you do. You enjoy, I'll say it again, farting around. 

Carol, you have a poignant scene where your character confesses that she's fallen in love with Frank. That's a genuinely sincere moment, which is not so common on It's Always Sunny.  What was it like to play that kind of scene and to play it with Danny?
Kane: I hate to be repetitive, but it was like a gift. Because to look in Danny's eyes, who I've known most of my life now, and that life is getting long — to look in Danny's eyes and be able to tell him the truth: that's a gift. I didn't have to make up anything.  

DeVito: That goes both ways. You're with somebody who's — I mean, Carol, you're an amazing actress. But you are you.

Kane: That's what we have. I had him and he had me, and then you just begin and hope that it'll be there and hopefully it is there. 

Am I right that this is the first time you have acted together since Taxi, or is there something that I've forgotten about?
Kane: I think it is. 

DeVito: I think, besides some wild dinners. Was that acting? That wasn't acting. 

Kane: By the way, you know, back in the day, like a million years ago, Danny and I acted in a movie that Gene Wilder directed, called The World's Greatest Lover, remember, D? 

DeVito: Yeah. It was really cool because I was in the trailer most of the time. I played a part of — what was I in that? 

Kane: You were the assistant director. 

DeVito: Assistant director, yeah. It was a SAG job. It was in those days before anybody had done many things. You'd done much more than I had. 

Kane: Oh, not that much. The thing was I had already done Hester Street. Gene saw that and for some reason, that made him think I could do World's Greatest Lover. I still don't know why. So I was only 25 — no, I was 24 because I turned 25 after we wrapped. 

DeVito: Wow, you were a baby girl.

Kane: I'd done a bunch of indies. I was a lucky girl. And there was D. 

DeVito: We've known each other — well, I knew Carol way before she knew me. 

Kane: Here comes the story that I love. 

DeVito: So in the '60s, OK?

Kane: Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't alive in the '60s!

DeVito: You weren't around. It was just a figment of my imagination 

So I would ride the 104 bus. I lived on 89th Street, down by Riverside. I was working in some like off- off- off- off-Broadway, whatever I was doing as an actor trying to make ends meet. I used to get on the 104 bus and go down to rehearsal or whatever it was, and I'd see this angel sitting on the bus. How old were you? You were in high school. 

Kane: I was going from my house on 68th and Broadway to 60th and Amsterdam where I went to professional children's school. So I got on that bus every day and I was, you know, probably 15 years old. 

DeVito: It was a bus that I took all the time. And it was a bus that Carol took all the time. 

Kane: I got on at 68th Street and you got on at 89th Street? 

DeVito: 89th Street, yeah. Anyway, long story short, I remember her. I remember this angel that I used to see all the time who never looked at anybody.  

Kane: I was very, very, very shy in those days.  

DeVito: Also you're in New York and you're on a bus. It's a good idea to be really cautious and not engage with any wacky actor.  

Kane: Any bum sitting across from you!

So you never talked to her on the bus, Danny?
DeVito: [Laughing while Kane shakes her index finger to indicate "no."] No, I never talked to her on the bus. But when I finally got to meet her, that was probably the first story that I told her. For years and years, I repeated this story with everybody that we finally mutually met, that I knew her way before she knew me. 

Do you remember him from the bus, Carol?
Kane: No!

DeVito: Oh, God, I looked like a hippie Ratso Rizzo on the bus. 

I went back and rewatched the first Taxi episode that Simka appears in, which is in Season 2. Your first dialogue exchange is actually with Danny. Do you remember how it felt shooting your first episode? I would imagine it helped that you knew Danny.
Kane: I think I was pretty terrified because I'd never done anything like that before. Also back in the day, and I'm ashamed to say it, but D knows this: If you did movies, you didn't do TV. It was frowned upon. Remember that, Danny? 

DeVito: I do remember that. 

Kane: The reason I did it was that I saw an episode that Jack Gilford was on. He played Judd [Hirsch's] dad, or Judd thought he was his dad.  I love Jack Gilford and I thought he was so brilliant. I said to myself, if Jack Gilford could do it, I could do it too. So I went there. But I felt like a fish out of water. In fact, it was Jeff Conaway who was the first person to sort of — he took me to lunch at the commissary the first day I was there, you know? It was so funny because I thought that the producer, Jim Brooks, was a guy that worked for Kellogg's food company or something. Because I didn't know that on sitcoms, producers were the writers and the creators. Seriously, I'm not even kidding. I thought he worked for Kellogg's. 

DeVito: Why Kellogg's? 

Kane: Well, you know, some cereal company, somebody that would advertise. He looked like an ad guy. 

DeVito: But you just picked cereal out of the blue. Because I'm thinking of Jim and I'm wondering why. Have you ever seen him eat Cheerios? 

Kane: No. I just didn't understand that he was the creator. So he came back to my dressing room. You know, TV is an ideal form for an actor that does stage and film because you rehearse for five days and then you shoot the film in front of a live audience. So you're doing theater and film at the same time. It's just glorious as far as I'm concerned. But I had never done it. I was a very serious actress, you know, I had done Hester Street and I had gotten nominated [for an Oscar]. I was a method actress. And one thing in the theater that you do not do is, you do not come back after "half-hour."

When the stage manager goes around and says, "Half-hour, half-hour," then that's your time to shut the door and prepare and be quiet. Right, D? 

DeVito: Absolutely. 

Kane: So that's what I was doing. Then Jim knocked on my door. If I wasn't such a lady, I would say Jim knocked on my f---ing door. I was so shocked. He came to give me a note after half-hour. I was having none of it. I kicked Jim Brooks out of my dressing room. "I'm preparing. It's half-hour." And I kicked him out. Of course, because he's Jim, he totally f---ing respected it. 

At this point, did you still think he worked for Kellogg's?
DeVito: She didn't know who he was. He's just some guy who comes in.

Kane: It was my first episode, so I thought the producers were the money people. And what was I talking to money people after half-hour about? So I kicked him out and he was so incredibly great that he respected that move.

Of course now, I would beg him to come to my dressing room. 

DeVito: Give me a note. 

Kane: At half-hour, during the shoot, anytime. There was this other thing they did in Taxi called "cast to the rail." You'd do a run-through, and the producers would be sitting up in the bleachers where the audience sat. They'd be in the first and second row of the bleachers and there'd be a rail separating the stage from the writers. The stage manager, after the run-through, would say, "cast to the rail," and the cast would have to go and stand at the rail and look up at the bleachers, to the writers and producers.  The first time I saw or heard "cast to the rail,"  and I had to go there and look up — I thought it was so barbaric, you know? But very shortly after that, I would be the first one to run to the rail, put my hands on the rail and beg for notes. Because the notes we got — Danny, right? — from Jim Brooks and Stan Daniels —

DeVito: — everybody who was there contributing.  

Kane: Those were gold. So "cast to the rail" turned out to be this thing that I was so grateful for. I did a little bit of sitcom work after that, and nobody did that. I'll tell you, I just totally missed it. I was desperate for it. It was such an honest communication in an artistic fashion. Sometimes I would just cry from the notes. When I came back the second time, and by then I knew Jim and Stan Daniels, I was trying to be funny because I wanted to please them, which was a year later or something, Jim just lit into me and he said, "You don't try and be funny. If we wrote it funny, it'll be funny. If it's not, then we have to fix it. But you don't try and be funny." If I was an engraver and I worked in marble, that's the note I would engrave.  

DeVito: That whole experience with Andy and Carol and all the Taxi people was always just really engaging and fun. You had to deal with that thing that you're talking about — you get to rehearse. Which actors love to rehearse. We do.

Kane: But not Andy! 

DeVito: I was going to say that. You didn't get to work with Andy [Kaufman] a lot, but we helped out as much as we could because Andy was off flying around some universe somewhere during the rehearsals. It was kind of like, all you. I mean, you had to hold it together. 

Kane: But then he came back and he was brilliant. 

DeVito: Oh, he's great. He's great. But all week — 

Kane: We had a fake Andy all week. We had a guy named Jeff who was adorable and he used to wear a little cardboard sign around his neck that said Andy. 

Really?
DeVito: Yeah. It's like when you do a movie with kids, and they have to go to school, like in Matilda or whatever. You're acting to a tennis ball off-camera. So she was asked to do that all week. 

Did he read the lines too?
DeVito: Yeah, he would read the lines.  

Kane: He was nothing like Andy. Because nobody's anything like Andy. 

DeVito: The rhythms were not exactly the same as when you got Andy on stage. Which was kind of funny in itself. 

At the end of this Always Sunny episode, the two of you kiss in the rain and Sam accepts Frank's marriage proposal. Carol, does this mean that you're going to be showing up again in the next season?
Kane: [Holding up crossed fingers.] See these fingers? 

I do.
Kane: This is all I have to say. I hope, I hope. 

How could they not bring you back after that finale?
DeVito: No, no, no, no. There will be Carol Kane movement.

Is there any possibility of other Taxi alums showing up?
DeVito: I'm not sure about that. If you look at the 17 or whatever years that we've been doing it, there are a couple of repeat performances. The lawyer always comes back, and then Lynne came back as Charlie's mom. But we haven't done anything like this. This is really unique, especially for Frank. You can never tell what Frank's thinking anyway. 

Do you think his love for Sam is sincere?
DeVito: I don't think I can talk about that right now. But my love for Carol is sincere.