‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s ‘Cock Chewa’ on How She Set Out to Be ‘Even Grosser’ Than Hawk Tuah

In the end, love conquers all — in fact, it even beats out cock-chewing. That was the message on last night's season finale of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which finally made good on the story this season has been building toward: Frank Reynolds as a contestant on The Golden Bachelor. While the earliest trailers for Season 17 showed Frank excitedly choosing a cowboy-hat wearing Hawk Tuah Girl parody named “Cock Chewa,” Frank instead fell for Sam, played by his Taxi co-star Carol Kane.

As for Cock Chewa — who is actually named Sarah and played by Audrey Corsa — she got rejected in the end. Fortunately, Corsa wasn’t too heartbroken to join me for a conversation about the season finale.

Were you a fan of Sunny before this season?

Huge! I grew up in L.A., and the summer before I went into high school, they were doing The Nightman Cometh at the Troubadour and I was dying to get a ticket. I couldn’t get one, though. It was totally sold out almost immediately. But yeah, throughout my whole adolescence, it was my favorite show, so this was huge for me.

How did you get the part?

I had had a two-year hiatus from social media when I went in for it, so I wasn’t familiar with the Hawk Tuah Girl. I actually think that was a good thing because I came into this character from my point of view, just whatever I wanted it to be. And, being such a fan of the show for so long, I knew what their vibes were and how this character would get into it.

Then, a couple days later I heard, and a couple days after that I was on set at Fox. It was very quick.

Once you found out that this character was based on Hawk Tuah Girl, did you study up on her?

Of course. I think part of its whole viral moment was that it was just so disgusting. It was so foul and shocking. And so I thought, “Okay, this is real. This really happened, so I’m going to lean in as much as I can to be even grosser.”

How much time did you end up spending with The Gang?

I was on set for a week. It was great because we did a couple of things in Paddy’s Pub, which was unbelievable. I don’t tend to get starstruck, but with these people, this is my huge nerdy fantasy, so I was a little nervous, but they really encouraged improv.

Then Carol Kane is in the episode! She’s such a legend and she and Danny were on Taxi together so that reunion was so cool.

Then we went to the Bachelor mansion. I didn’t watch that show. I watched Bachelor in Paradise during the pandemic, but I never watched the main series. You see clips, though, and you get the idea. Anyway, we got to the mansion, which is in Agora Hills and it’s exactly as you might imagine it. All of the plants are fake, all the flowers, the roses outside, everything is paper or plastic. Jesse Palmer was really cool, though. He was so down to play. That takes a special kind of cool person — an ego-free person who can do the thing that they do as their job, but also do a satire of it.

Last question: What was Danny DeVito like?

He was everything you’d hope him to be. He’s kind, funny, nice, hilarious, spontaneous, but also just laid-back. He was really game to improv different stuff together, too. It was all just such a gift.