It feels appropriate to be speaking to Glenn Howerton in the midst of a snowstorm—one so furious that it’s technically thundersnowing. This is the man best known for playing Dennis Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and though it’s the opposite of sunny in New York at the moment, the character that made Howerton famous is like a bad weather system that spoils everything it touches. He’s essentially the show’s main character, and also its most unpalatable: vain, exploitative, and prone to fits of incredible rage. A man who, fittingly, likes to see himself as a force of nature in his own right, having once threatened to come down on a man “like the crashing of a thousand waves.”

A character like Dennis is hard to escape, especially for the actor who’s been writing and playing him for twelve seasons. It was a shock when it was announced Howerton would be stepping down from the cult classic FX show to head his own NBC sitcom, A.P. Bio, as Jack Griffin, a misanthrope teacher more interested in destroying his Harvard nemesis than he is actually teaching kids a single thing. It’s certainly within his wheelhouse, but an hour with Howerton reveals just how thoughtful he is with the roles he selects, and the one he’s been inextricably tied to—for better or worse—for thirteen years.

GQ sat down with Howerton—thundersnow notwithstanding—to discuss this new phase of his career, the fallacy of the “American Dream,” and what he regrets about the early seasons of Sunny. [Source]