The next stage came in June, when Danny took a cutout of me to the set of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I checked my phone after taking a nap and saw hundreds of notifications. All of them were linked to this post from Rob McElhenney. But it took me a minute to understand what it was. For three weeks, I’d been seeing pictures of myself with a cardboard Danny, so I didn’t immediately get that this was the reverse — that I was the cardboard one.
I found out later that the idea came from Jordan Rader, a director on It’s Always Sunny, who had the props team make it. The cardboard cutout of me eventually ended up in a dumpster behind the studio where they film, but luckily, it was rescued by someone who works on the same lot.
‘When I saw the real Danny, my mouth went completely dry’
In September, when I was just starting out as a freshman in college, I got a message from The Talk on CBS. They said they wanted to fly me out for an episode about the biggest viral stories of the summer.
They flew me and my parents out to Los Angeles, and I was given questions beforehand. On the air, they gave me four more cardboard Dannys from various movies — Danny as the Penguin, Danny from Matilda, Danny from Taxi and Danny and Arnold from Twins.
Then they said, “We have one more Danny for you,” and in comes the real one, who was on the show to promote the movie Smallfoot. When I saw him, my mouth went completely dry, and I started rolling my tongue in my mouth like some crazy lizard person. We hugged, and he asked me what my Danny was up to now. I told him I had him in my dorm room, to which he responded, “Is that a co-ed dorm?” My brain was still buffering, and I just awkwardly said, “Yes.”