Did you catch Mary Elizabeth Ellis in this week’s Happy Endings? Or maybe you remember her as one of the six leads in NBC’s ill-fated Perfect Couples. To others, she’s simply The Waitress from FX’s hit It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Whatever the show, it’s clear the gal has a talent for making people laugh.
So would she say that comedy is her genre of choice? “I would right now,” she told me during a recent interview. “I always enjoyed doing drama but it’s just fun to laugh. A lot of my friends do comedy and it’s fun to work with my friends. And there’s a difference between a drama set and a comedy set. On a comedy set, people are just happier, and I think it’s more fun.”
On Wednesday’s episode of Happy Endings, she played a childhood friend that Penny (Casey Wilson) would rather avoid. Ellis called the experience “really fun, to get to play something totally different. My character is very sassy and she is completely always happy and loves everyone and sees the best in everyone. She’s one of those people that’s so nice that it’s really annoying and you hate being around [her]. It was really fun to do because I usually play people with a little bit more edge, like my character on Always Sunny.”
Her thus-far-nameless role on the FX series means that she gets to work with her husband, show star and producer Charlie Day. “It’s fantastic,” she gushed. “It’s really great because he’s working all the time, so it’s nice to have a reason to go to the set and hang out with him. This will be our eighth season, and we’ve all been really good friends for a really long time, so it’s just like going to hang with your friends. Even the crew has been with [us] forever.”
Although the supporting roles have been wonderful to her, Ellis hasn’t ruled out reclaiming a starring role someday. She told me, “I would love to have another lead in a comedy series like Perfect Couples, because I had a really great time. It was so well written and everyone that worked on the show was so great.”
Another of her aspirations is to work on more films, possibly including a shift into more serious work. “I love doing drama, but I would rather do like a dramatic film, where you’re there for maybe a few months as opposed to a few years,” she said. “It’s definitely a different thing, but I think as an actor, what you really want to do is just good acting. Just being really honest and truthful, just kind of living in it.” She’s no stranger to drama, having done guest spots on House and Cold Case.
But for now, Ellis is staying with comedy, and focusing on her family. “Charlie and I just had a baby, so I’m being a mom,” she told me, adding that “I’m in the middle of doing three more episodes of New Girl, and then it’s just back to auditioning. I have a couple of projects that are coming up. I’m writing as well.”
It’s great work for her — both New Girl and Happy Endings are on her list of favorite comedies, as is the FX animated series Unsupervised. It’s clear that she loves to laugh. And with Always Sunny renewed through its ninth season, she’ll be around to make us laugh for quite awhile longer.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Mar 30, 2012 @ 08:00 EST5EDT
