Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz has confirmed the reason why fans didn’t get reunited with Erik Per Sullivan after someone else was cast for the role as Dewey in the reboot of the show.
There was nothing more anticipated this year that Disney+ finally bringing back Malcolm in the Middle after two decades of being deprived of the family favorite show.
On April 10, the streaming platform released a four-part series, which follows Malcolm and his siblings as adults, having reunited for their parents’ (Hal and Lois) 40th anniversary.
Of the original cast, Jane Kaczmarek, Bryan Cranston and Frankie Muniz,
Justin Berfield, and Christopher Masterson all reprise their roles.
However, Sullivan, who played Dewey in the original series didn’t.
Now, Muniz has explained just why he chose not to return.
Eric Per Sullivan played Dewey in the original show (Disney)
Appearing on the Zach Sang Show, Muniz revealed that Sullivan had ‘worked hard’ after the 2000 show ended in 2006, to have a somewhat ‘normal’ life, and they wanted to respect that.
When asked why they didn’t simply write the character out of the show, Muniz said it was important that he was there, even if Dewey had a new face.
He said: “We knew from when we originally started talking about the idea 10 years ago that Eric, who played Dewey, was probably not going to come back.”
He added that ‘he really worked hard after the show ended’ to ‘have a normal’ life.
Explaining that Sullivan ‘likes where he’s at’, he said: “And to kind of come back and open everything back up again, I don’t – I don’t know if he’d want to do that. So, we respected that, but he was like, ‘Please, please recast it. Please do it.’”
He shared that with the actor, there was ‘no negativity or animosity at all’ and that ‘when you see Caleb [Elssworth-Clark], who plays Dewey’, he looks very similar.
Muniz joked of his similarity to Sullivan, telling the podcast host: “Bro, you can’t tell me that’s not Eric.”
As for why they didn’t write him out of the show instead of recasting him, he said when people see Clark, they’ll be ‘excited to see Dewey’ the character, rather than just wanting to see Sullivan.
But this isn’t the first time members of the show have spoken about Sullivan, as in an interview with The Guardian, Kaczmarek explained that the former actor, who went on to get a degree at university after the show ended, that he had turned down a lot of cash to reprise his role.
She said: “They offered him buckets of money to come back, and he just said: ‘No thank you’.”
Cranston also told Entertainment Weekly he had a conversation with his former on-screen son and it didn’t go aas planned.
“I talked to Erik, and I said, ‘Hey, we got the show! It’s going to come back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ And I go, ‘Yeah, so we’re looking forward to having you back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t want to do it. But it’s fantastic’,” Cranston said.
But it’s nice that he’s doing his own thing.
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