Glenn Howerton: Sunny Exit, BlackBerry Role & Illness Rumors

Every few years, the internet decides Glenn Howerton walked away from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia — or that an illness forced him off the show. Neither rumor matches the record.

Known for: Dennis Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia · Born: April 13, 1976, Okinawa, Japan · Recent film role: Jim Balsillie in BlackBerry (2023) · Status on Sunny: Still a core member; no official departure

Six facts, one pattern: the biography that survives verification is about workload — leading roles on two series and a film — while the rumor mill is about exit and illness, which have no paper trail.

Did Glenn Howerton try to leave It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

Did Glenn Howerton try to leave It’s Always Sunny?

• 2018: Howerton told Entertainment Weekly, “I’ve not officially left yet and I hope people understand that” (Yahoo Entertainment)
• 2025: At a PaleyLive anniversary panel, Howerton said he almost quit in 2018, describing the pressure of acting, writing, producing, and co-creating Sunny at once (People, celebrity news)

So yes: Howerton seriously considered leaving Sunny in 2018. The consideration happened while he was starring in NBC’s A.P. Bio — renewed for a second season that year, per TVLine’s reporting — and the scheduling load became the backstory for his fewer episodes.

Was Dennis actually going to leave Always Sunny?

In-story, Dennis’s departure was deliberate. The season 12 finale set up his move to North Dakota after he discovered he was a father, and season 13 opened with the rest of the gang processing his absence (Vulture, recap analysis).

On the production side, Howerton hadn’t announced a farewell; the reported story was about workload, not an exit. The gap between those two facts is where the rumor grew. A character written out for story reasons looked, to a casual viewer, like an actor written out for real reasons.

Why was Dennis barely in season 13?

• Wikipedia’s episode guide counts Howerton in six of the ten season 13 episodes, with no writing credits for the season (Wikipedia, episode guide)
• Rob McElhenney’s August 2018 promise that Howerton would be in “pretty much every” episode did not match the finished season (TVLine, industry reporting)

TVLine reported the reduction tracked with A.P. Bio’s second-season renewal in 2018. The overlap made a full-season Dennis schedule unsustainable, and Howerton’s role scaled back — not written out.

Where is Dennis in Always Sunny season 13?

• Dennis appears in the season 13 premiere, “The Gang Makes Paddy’s Great Again,” even though the episode plays up his absence (Vulture, season 13 premiere recap)
• He is missing from “The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies’ Reboot,” “Charlie’s Home Alone,” “The Gang Wins the Big Game,” and “Mac Finds His Pride” (Looper, pop-culture explainer)

Looper’s rundown traced those absences to Howerton’s wider career moves and his stated desire to branch out after many years on Sunny (Looper).

Is Dennis in season 14 of Always Sunny?

• Howerton returned as an actor in seasons 13 and 14, according to his own account (People, celebrity news)
• No official or reported exit followed season 14; the “is Dennis gone” question has a clear answer

The answer is no. The season 13 storyline kept Dennis offscreen for stretches, but the actor stayed in the cast and the character came back.

The implication: Howerton was negotiating a lighter load, not a farewell. The confusion came from reading Dennis’s fictional exit as Howerton’s real one.

The pattern is consistent: the “exit” was a scheduling pivot misread as a permanent departure.

Who created Always Sunny?

Is Glenn Howerton one of the creators of Always Sunny?

• The official “created by” credit belongs to Rob McElhenney (Wikipedia, series page)
• Howerton is routinely described as a co-creator and executive producer in news profiles and fan coverage

Calling Howerton the sole creator overstates the credit. Calling him a founding voice undersells it. The accurate shorthand is “co-creator in practice, not in the on-screen credit.”

How did Howerton create the show with Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day?

• Howerton, McElhenney, and Day formed the show’s original core cast
• The trio shaped the early seasons together, with Howerton acting, writing, and producing

The distinction matters because the “who created it” search usually means “who made this voice?” That voice belongs to the trio; the formal credit belongs to McElhenney.

What this means: “Creator” in fan discussions often means “founding voice.” Howerton qualifies; the formal distinction stays with McElhenney.

What else is Glenn Howerton in?

What TV shows did Glenn Howerton lead after It’s Always Sunny?

• A.P. Bio (2018–2021): Howerton starred as Jack Griffin, the lead of NBC’s comedy
• The show’s second-season renewal in 2018 landed in the same production window as Sunny season 13

Those years explain the real schedule crunch behind the season 13 rumors. Howerton was leading another network series while Dennis was being written around.

What was Glenn Howerton’s role in BlackBerry?

• BlackBerry (2023): Howerton played Jim Balsillie, the company’s co-CEO
• The Independent highlighted his serious turn in the film, a deliberate register shift from Dennis Reynolds’s manic energy (The Independent, BlackBerry role)

Balsillie gave Howerton a showcase outside comedy and reset his public bio from “Sunny guy” to “that guy from BlackBerry too.”

Why does Glenn Howerton’s name come up in Joker fan-casting?

• No official Joker casting exists; it is a fan conversation, not a credit
• Dennis Reynolds’s controlled intensity is the usual reason he gets proposed

The chatter is a compliment to his range, not an entry on his résumé. Search engines mix the two, which is why a quick query surfaces more speculation than biography.

The trade-off: Howerton’s most famous role overshadows the rest of his filmography, so search collapses him into Dennis — and then reads anything unusual about Dennis as news about Howerton.

What is Glenn Howerton’s illness?

Has Glenn Howerton disclosed an illness?

• No primary statement from Howerton, his representatives, or a major outlet discloses an illness diagnosis
• His own comments, reported by The Independent, describe career ambition and concerns about the show’s direction — not health (The Independent, BlackBerry role)

The illness rumor looks like an inference: Dennis vanished from part of season 13, so some viewers assumed the actor must be sick. The documented record points elsewhere.

Is there any evidence behind Glenn Howerton’s illness rumors?

• The documented explanations are professional: A.P. Bio scheduling, a step back from the writers’ room, and his stated desire to branch out
• No major outlet has tied a health condition to his season 13 absences

That is not a diagnosis and not a denial. It’s an absence of evidence, and the verification bar for medical claims about a private person is high.

Did a health condition explain why Dennis was absent in season 13?

What the absence explains is why the rumor persists. A viewer who missed the interviews saw a gap, and the gap filled itself with a health scare. The gap was never empty; it just lived outside the episode listings.

The pattern: when a performer steps back from a long-running series, “illness” becomes a default rumor. Howerton’s repeated, on-record account names workload and creative restlessness as the triggers, and that is the verified part of the story.

Did they replace Dee on Always Sunny?

Is Kaitlin Olson still on It’s Always Sunny?

• Kaitlin Olson has played Sweet Dee continuously since the first season; no recast has happened (Wikipedia, series page)
• Dee remained a main character through season 13 even while Dennis’s role shrank

The “replace Dee” thought tracks with the same season 13 confusion: if Dennis was “missing,” viewers may have misread the rest of the cast’s status too. Olson’s continuity is the cleanest answer in the whole rumor cluster.

What is the lowest rated Always Sunny episode?

• Ratings databases and fan polls disagree, so no single episode consistently holds the bottom slot
• The honest answer is source-dependent: check a named rating aggregator instead of treating any “worst episode” pick as fact

The question is trivia, and the honest treatment is to say so. A “worst” Sunny episode still gets watched, argued about, and re-rated.

What happened to Dennis’s kid on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

• In the season 12 finale, Dennis learned he had fathered a child and left Philadelphia for North Dakota
• The child does not become a recurring character in the main series

The query is ambiguous. If “what happened” means “did the kid change the show,” the answer is no: the child served the exit storyline, and once Howerton returned, the story receded.

Why this matters: the Dee and Dennis questions are really one question — is the core cast stable? The evidence says yes.

Timeline: the 2018 crunch behind the “Sunny exit” search

Three dates, one throughline: the peak of the “exit” rumors landed in the single year when Howerton’s schedule split in two.

• 2018 — Season 13 premieres on FXX on September 5; Dennis appears in six of ten episodes, per Wikipedia’s episode guide (Wikipedia, episode guide)
• 2018 — Looper connects the missing episodes to A.P. Bio’s production and Howerton’s stated desire to branch out (Looper, pop-culture explainer)
• 2025 — Howerton tells a PaleyLive panel he almost quit in 2018, confirming the near-departure he had hinted at seven years earlier (People, fan Q&A)

The pattern: Howerton’s career moves always coincided with a public schedule change on Sunny. From the outside it looked like a departure; inside, the credits and interviews caught up with the explanation.

Confirmed facts vs what’s still unclear

What this means: the confirmed list forms one consistent career story — he stayed, he scaled back, he came back. The unclear list is where the rumors live, and every item on it lacks a sourced answer.

What the people involved actually said

I’ve not officially left yet and I hope people understand that.

Glenn Howerton, 2018, in an Entertainment Weekly interview carried by Yahoo Entertainment

Pretty much every episode.

Rob McElhenney on Howerton’s season 13 presence, August 2018, in TVLine

The throughline: both quotes point to the same fact — Howerton’s status was changing in degree, not leaving the show. McElhenney expected more Dennis, and Howerton was already explaining why there would be less.

Summary

For anyone who lands on “did Glenn Howerton leave Sunny?” from a search engine, the verified answer has been stable since 2018: almost, not quite, and back on screen. The evidence runs through a scheduling crunch with A.P. Bio, a confession at a 2025 PaleyLive panel, and an episode guide that shows Dennis returning to the regular cast.

For the next person who sees a “Howerton illness” headline, the decision is clear: check the People interview and the season credits before sharing — or rerun the same seven-year rumor cycle that started when Dennis drove to North Dakota.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Glenn Howerton: Illness, Wife, Ethnicity, Always Sunny
• Glenn Howerton: Biography, Always Sunny Exit & Career