“Abbott Elementary” producers cut an extensive Frank–Mr. Johnson backstory from “It's Always Sunny” crossover episode

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday night's episode of Abbott Elementary, "Volunteers."

We always knew that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Frank (Danny DeVito) would easily match Abbott Elementary's Mr. Johnson's (William Stanford Davis) weird.

But we just didn't know how much. Abbott producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker revealed to Entertainment Weekly that Wednesday's crossover episode was originally supposed to feature an elaborate backstory between the two characters. But they had to cut it for time.

"We did at one point have a whole backstory between Frank and Mr. Johnson that they did know each other," Schumacker says. " It was that they went to high school together. They dated the same woman who was a canonical character in Sunny, this character dynasty. That ended up falling away just as a function of, 'Hey, we can't tell that story. Maybe let's save it for another time.' 21 and a half minutes is not a lot of time to tell a story."

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In addition to Frank and Mr. Johnson, there were plenty of other hysterical pairings in the episode, including Mac (Rob McElhenney) becoming an assistant to Ava (Janelle James), Dee (Kaitlin Olson) impresses Janine (Quinta Brunson) until she tries to seduce Gregory (Tyler James Williams), and Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) tries to teach Charlie (Charlie Day) to read.

Halpern and Schumacker took us behind the scenes of crafting the first of two crossover episodes, including how they decided who to pair with who, if Charlie's new-found literacy will remain canon across shows, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did this come to be? Was it totally spurred by the social media interactions between both casts?

PATRICK SCHUMACKER: There were a couple of points of entry. There was social media stuff, but it really kicked off backstage at the Emmys or possibly the TV upfronts. There were two different instances where Quinta and Rob were occupying the same space in person. At first, it felt like just an in joke. And with every subsequent inadvertent run-in it became more of an, "Actually, I think we could maybe make this work."

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It's Always Sunny is a lot more adult than Abbott. They're on cable and not primetime, so they can do and say a lot of things that you guys can't. Was it difficult to find the voices of these characters without having access to that explicit content? 

JUSTIN HALPERN: No, because it was told from our POV. It's an Abbott episode, and when that's our entry point and the POVs are our characters, it becomes much clearer to us. We were more concerned at the start about, "Tonally will their characters be able to fit?" rather than they can't curse and can't do the crazy stuff that they do? Once we figured out the story where the tones would work, then it was fun. The writer, Garrett Werner, is a massive Sunny fan, so he had those voices down pretty well. And then, we shared the script with Rob and their team and told them, "Hey, if anything sounds off, tell us what it is and we will change it." There was a couple lines like that, but for the most part it was pretty good.

SCHUMACKER: We were pretty judicious, but we still were able to put in some things that were maybe a little bit more out there for a typical Abbott episode. Mr. Johnson, Gregory, and Frank's story, for instance, is not something that you would see on a typical episode of Abbott with Frank getting caught in the trap covered in piss-soaked belts. We were able to do it lightly.

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The next season of Sunny hasn't premiered yet, but have you guys already shot the crossover? Do you know what that's going to look like yet? 

SCHUMACKER: Yeah, it's been written, it's been shot. I was present for quite a bit of it, and it's very cool. The ideal viewing experience will eventually be watching these two episodes back to back, even though I don't know if they've even solidified their date yet, but eventually, they're going to end up on Hulu together and it'll be very easy to access both of them back to back. They do very much play off of each other.

Okay, so this episode's very self-contained. They could easily leave Abbott and never be heard from again. Is there a clear throughline between the two episodes besides the characters entering each other's worlds? 

HALPERN: Their episode is what's happening in between our episode in the scenes that we're not showing. You're seeing what they're doing. It's really clever the way that they piece together their episode. It's really ambitious.

SCHUMACKER: There was a lot of trust between both writing staffs and producers in each other's ability to capture the essence of each other's shows. When we were breaking our episode, we had to send the Sunny team a rough beat sheet before we were able to write out the entire script. They had to start working on their episode a little bit early because their episode with our cast was the first one that they shot in their production order.

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In terms of breaking those beats, how did you figure out which characters you wanted to pair off with whom?

HALPERN: We work from a place of what do we want to see as writers on the show, but then we also coalesced around a couple things in their show that are canonical to Sunny that seemed to fit nicely in our universe. The fact that Charlie can't read lends itself nicely to, "This is a school, so somebody finds that out. We have empathetic teachers. They're going to want to help that person." And seeing Sheryl Lee Ralph teach Charlie how to read is really funny to us.

SCHUMACKER: Those two got along like gangbusters. Sheryl wants to do a spinoff.

From the earliest discussions, was it a given from the start that Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) would have been to Paddy's in the past?

SCHUMACKER: We did an initial brainstorming session that we did with Rob and Charlie in the room, and the question was, "Who's going to recognize 'em? Who's going to put two and two together when they show up?" Given where she's from and the crowd that she runs in, Melissa's the obvious choice for that.

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You often reference pop culture or celebs in the show, particularly Barbara getting people's names wrong. So do both Frank and Danny DeVito exist in the Abbott universe? 

SCHUMACKER: Wow, I don't know that we've explored that.

HALPERN: I would say no because I don't think Danny DeVito and Frank exist in Sunny. So now that we have said we are in a shared universe with Sunny, we have to adopt some of their rules.

SCHUMACKER: Has Bradley Cooper been in a movie with Danny DeVito?

HALPERN: You are f---ing up our brains right now.

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In terms of Barbara teaching Charlie to read, does that mean that in future seasons of Sunny that he will be slightly less illiterate? 

HALPERN: That's a good question for them. He reads a little at the end of our episode, but he's not taking down Cormac McCarthy.

SCHUMACKER: It's probably a muscle he's going to have to continue to exercise. If he doesn't, it's going to atrophy. They can do with it what they want. I would believe it either way. But to your point about whether there are real consequences of this episode in the mythology of both shows. Certainly for our show, there are consequences with regard to the golf club. This is an episode that it isn't wholly self-contained. It'll reward viewers who have been sticking with this entire season in that there is a little bit of movement in that overarching storyline. We wanted to make sure that it still felt like an Abbott episode and that it wasn't this gimmicky thing that if you were unfamiliar with Sunny, you could watch it and it would still feel like, "Hey, these are really cool guest stars that we got on the show playing interesting characters that maybe you've never seen before." Maybe it turns you onto Sunny, which would be amazing.

Was Janine calling Dee "bird-ass" intended to be a reference to the guys always calling her Bird? 

HALPERN: That was serendipity.

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Mac came out awhile ago on Sunny, but he's clearly not above offering Ava sexual favors. Can you talk about sussing that out and their strange dynamic? 

SCHUMACKER: His intent was not that what he was offering was overtly sexual. He just meant anything that she needs. She took it to mean that. There was this whole run that they went on that we couldn't use all of because there were some things that definitely would not fly on ABC.

Like what?

SCHUMACKER: Ava has a line about the white guys that she's into, and she names Johnny Knoxville and Johnny Bravo. I almost ruined a take off-camera cackling and spitting out my coffee because Rob ad-libbed, "That Johnny Knoxville guy destroyed his penis. There's nothing there." I was like, "Okay, well that one, we can't say on ABC."

HALPERN: I bet they can say it on Dr. Odyssey.

Actually, there was a man who broke his penis on Dr. Odyssey.

SCHUMACKER: Well see that show has the monopoly on destroyed penises then.

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Dennis refuses to be on camera. Did Glenn Howerton have limited availability or what propelled that choice?

SCHUMACKER: You got it. Glenn had a show that he is a series regular on called Sirens. It's the Netflix show, and it was shooting in New York. He flew in specifically to work on this and had to fly back. We had him for half a day, so we had to build that in. That was one of those ones where we didn't know if we had him, and so, we had to stay a little bit nimble as far as breaking the story. But he's very heavy in their episode.

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Jacob almost says their show title at the end. Did you go back and forth on whether you wanted to have it in there at all? Why'd you decide to cut it off mid "Philadelphia?"

HALPERN: From the first draft, Garrett put that little touch in. I don't even think that was in the outline. From the writer's draft, it was always cut off right there.

Would you be open to doing more crossover episodes?

SCHUMACKER: One a year is probably our max, given the complexity of actually pulling it off.

HALPERN: Maybe Ava will go on location at the White Lotus.

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