Frankie Muniz said he won’t allow his son to become a child actor.
The Malcolm in the Middle alum, 38, told Pedestrian TV in an interview released on Sunday, March 24, that he “would never let my kid go into the business,” adding, “and not that I had a negative experience, because to be honest, my experience was 100 percent positive. But I know so many people, friends that were close to me, that had such insanely negative experiences.”
Muniz, who shares 3-year-old son Mauz with wife Paige Price, added that “it’s an ugly world in general,” noting, “I never cared about rejection but there’s a ton of rejection. I truly say that becoming a successful actor is like winning the lottery because in the beginning that’s all it is.”
“You know, me, getting Malcolm in the Middle, maybe that was a little different than other shows, but as a child actor, you get picked because you look like you could be the kid of the parents,” he said.
Muniz pointed out that “people think it’s an easy thing to break into but, you know, I like to be honest about it and say there’s a million people in Hollywood who tried. Maybe they’re amazing actors — they can be the best actors on the planet — but they don’t even get the opportunity.”
“It’s not like going into a different industry where you can work really hard, you break get into it and, you know, you can keep going and you kind of work your way up the ladder,” he said. “It’s really a lot of luck that plays into it.”
In addition to Malcolm in the Middle, Muniz lent his voice to Nickelodeon’s The Fairly OddParents from 2001 to 2002 and also starred in hit kids films like Big Fat Liar in 2002 and Agent Cody Banks in 2003.
Muniz’s remarks come days after the release of Investigation Discovery’s docuseries, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which aired on March 17 and 18. The series gave former child stars and crew members a platform to speak out about their negative experiences at Nickelodeon.
Quiet on Set focused primarily on the notorious tenure of producer Dan Schneider at the network. Schneider, 58, played a pivotal role in writing and producing a string of successful shows during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including All That, Drake & Josh and The Amanda Show.
Schneider’s projects launched the careers of stars such as Ariana Grande, Miranda Cosgrove, Amanda Bynes, Drake Bell, Josh Peck, Jamie Lynn Spears and more. The positive experience, however, wasn’t shared by every actor at Nickelodeon. Many spoke out in the docuseries, including Bell, about the alleged toxic workplace practices and child sexual abuse behind the scenes.
“The clip reveals that former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell will be sharing publicly, for the first time, the story of the abuse he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck,” ID announced via Instagram. “His former dialogue coach who was convicted in 2004 for his crimes against Drake and ordered to register as a sex offender.”
Bell broke his silence after the docuseries’ release in an episode of “The Sarah Fraser Show” podcast on Friday, March 22, saying of the network: “There’s a very well-tailored response saying, ‘Learning about his trauma,’ because they couldn’t say that they didn’t know about this or what had happened, or anything. So I think that was a really well-tailored response by probably some big attorney in Hollywood.”
“I find it pretty empty, their responses,” Bell added, “because, I mean, they still show our shows, they still put our shows on. And I have to pay for my own therapy, I have to figure out what — I mean if there was anything, if there was any truth behind them actually caring, there would be something more than quotes on a page by obviously a legal representative telling them exactly how to tailor a response.”
