Credit to the cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: They’re usually pretty good about not bringing that show’s chaotic vibe with them when they score parts in other projects, typically maintaining a pretty normal Hollywood star level of decorum when not in the immediate environs of The Gang. Still, sometimes the urge to play into a punchline is simply too strong, as presumably happened when Super Mario Galaxy Movie star Charlie Day—whilst promoting his massive blockbuster movie for children—proved unable to resist taking the very obvious bait when asked to name his “favorite Luigi in recent American history.”
Sure, Mario studios Illumination and Nintendo would probably have been happier had Day left his answer to this very deliberately posed question—tossed at him during a Tokyo appearance on Stefano Rapone and Daniele Tinti’s Tintoria podcast—at a laugh, and then the “Well, me, first of all, number one” that he started with. But that would also have been about one one-thousandth as funny as then giving in to the bit, and dead-panning an additional “Luigi Mangione, number two” while co-star Anya Taylor-Joy hid her face, and Keegan-Michael Key burst into joyful laughter. (Hilariously, Rapone and Tinti then cheerfully thanked Day for giving them the answer of their dreams; the bit is at the 10-minute mark in the above video if you want to check it out yourself.)
Jokes about the nominative resemblance between Mario’s brother and the incarcerated Mangione have been running freely on the internet since pretty much the day the latter’s name was first attached to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson—but never in a way quite so close to an actual, official Nintendo product. (Given what day this started circulating online, we actually had to spend a fair amount of time hunting around for the actual interview so as to confirm that this wasn’t some kind of prankish edit, but, no, Day just seems to have been unable to help himself.) The interview didn’t dwell on the moment, but, there you have it: Luigi from Mario is Charlie Day’s number one Luigi, out of an (apparently) very competitive pack of two.