NEW YORK — Frankie Muniz isn’t afraid to be everyone’s comfort watch.
The onetime star of “Malcolm in the Middle,” now 40, looks almost the spitting image of his tween self: same striking blue eyes, same signature spiky hair. Ahead of the release of “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” a reboot of his beloved show, and a stint as spokesperson for the new Candy Crush game Crushable, Muniz says there’s nothing wrong with a little nostalgia.
“The fact that people love and appreciate something that I was a part of, how could I ever run from that? I love the show just as much as the people who watched it do,” he says.
As he readies for the release of “Malcolm” volume two in April, Muniz gushes about returning to a cast that felt like family.
“It had been 20 years, but it also hadn’t felt like any time had passed at all,” he tells USA TODAY of being back on set. “I know people say that, [but] it was creepy: We hadn’t seen each other, and it was as if no time had passed. We all fell right back into the roles.
“Most people know me as a kid on a TV show that they loved growing up,” he says, adding with a twinkle in his eye, “I just turned 40, I think I still look kind of similar. My bones hurt a little bit more.”
His ad for Crushable, a remixed version of Candy Crush on Yahoo Games, is choc-ful of classic ’90s dopamine brights, and casts Muniz as a Malcolm-like character, drawing on the exasperation of youth at the heart of his show. He wasn’t bothered, he said, by leaning into what people love about him.
“It’s really rare for anybody to get a second chance to do something,” Muniz says. “When you get the pilot, you’re so excited to film the pilot, and you hope that maybe it’s going to get picked up. It gets picked up, and you hope people are going to watch it.”
Frankie Muniz is just as excited for the ‘Malcolm’ reboot as fans
The actor, who played the title character in the Fox sitcom for seven seasons, will reprise his role, this time following as he reunites with his birth family.
“When ‘Malcolm’ started, I think 20 million people tuned in, and the viewership kept going up and up and up. When you’re doing it, you’re just so excited that people are actually watching it,” Muniz says. “You can’t grasp how incredible it is to be on something that people truly love.”
In just its second week on the air, “Malcolm” became the most-watched comedy on television at the time, raking in 23.2 million viewers, The New York Times reported at the time.
The miniseries, set to stream on Disney+ and Hulu, will follow Malcolm, alongside his daughter and girlfriend, as they navigate difficult family ties. The reboot, part of a trend in Hollywood to revisit old favorites, feels to Muniz like the cherry on top.
“You don’t get to feel the meaning that it has in people’s lives until later. People tell me all the time how much they love the show and how much it means to them, and they’re showing it to their kids,” he adds. “So to get to go back and do it again, knowing that people really appreciate it and knowing that people are really excited for it … it was really magical.”
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