And not just main-tier McPoyles Liam, Ryan, and Margaret (Jimmi Simpson, Nate Mooney, and Thesy Surface), either. Day revealed that the show’s currently filming season is pulling out the deep cut McPoyles, too—including the literal granddaddy of them all, Pappy McPoyle, played by acclaimed filmmaker (and occasional oddball character actor) Guillermo Del Toro. “We’re right in the middle of the new season of Sunny right now,” Day revealed during a sitdown with Deadline at SXSW this weekend. “I’ve got to go back tonight and I’m going to film tomorrow. We have the McPoyles coming back, and we also have Guillermo del Toro coming back, reprising his role of Pappy McPoyle.”
Del Toro has appeared in two episodes of Sunny to date, playing the maniacal, and possibly literally insane, patriarch of the McPoyle clan in two of the show’s most chaotic installments. (The Frankenstein Oscar nominee clearly gets a kick out of filming small roles like this; he also popped up in recent years on Barry, as a podcast-obsessed killer for hire.) Fans of the series haven’t seen Pappy McPoyle since 2016, when he appeared during the climax of season 11’s “McPoyle Vs. Ponderosa: The Trial Of The Century,” demonstrating that Bird Law is no bulwark against Bird Madness. The character, as such, is really just Del Toro rambling and ranting while wearing a prosthetic lazy eye, but, hey: The man seems to be having a good time with it.
Day also talked a bit about the overall thrust of this latest run of episodes, for a show that’s often veered back and forth between favoring larger, more conceptual episodes, and ones closer to its sitcom roots. “They’re all fairly large episodes,” Day noted of this most recent run. “But I feel like Season 17, we got a bit of our fastball back, and we brought back the same room and had the same chemistry. So Season 18 here, I think, is going to just pick up right where we left off. I can guarantee there will be some episodes that people will love.”
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