Kieran Culkin is making it clear that balancing his professional life and parenting duties isn’t always easy.
The Succession actor, 41, won a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award and a Primetime Emmy Award this month before jetting off to Sundance Film Festival to promote his latest movie, A Real Pain.
“Yesterday morning, my wife took the kids home and then I flew here. Yeah, I haven’t had a moments sort of rest [type of] thing. But I’m really looking forward to when I get home,” he told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, January 19. “Because the last couple weeks, I haven’t really been much of a parent, which makes me feel like s–t and makes me feel like I’m not me.”
Culkin shares daughter Kinsey, 4, and son Wilder, 2, with wife Jazz Charton.
After Sundance Film Festival wraps up in Park City, Utah, he’ll return home and revert to full dad mode. “I’m gonna turn the world off for about a week and just be a dad. ‘Did you read the email?’ No, I did not,” he said. “[I’m doing] nothing at all, except just diapers and bath time and stuff for like a week.”
He said he enjoys that his job as an actor gives him lengthy periods between gigs. “I get these, thankfully, these large periods of time where I get to just do that, and that’s where I feel like I’m most me. So I get to have that for a while because I actually don’t quite know when the next job is,” he said.
The actor would love to expand their family — which he made clear to Charton, 35, when he accepted his Emmy for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of Roman Roy in HBO’s Succession.
“Thank you for sharing your life with me and giving me two amazing kids,” he said to his wife. “And Jazz, I want more. You said maybe if I win. I love you so much. Thank you.”
Days before the ceremony, the actor warned his wife that she made that joke about baby No. 3 several months ago.
“I’ve been asking for a while. My wife, Jazz, said, ‘Maybe if you win the Emmy, haha.’ I didn’t bring it up for months,” Culkin said in the press room immediately after winning his Emmy. “And then when I won the [Golden] Globe, I said, ‘Do you remember what you said?’ And she goes, ‘No! What did I say?’ So, I told her, and it all came back to her.”
He added, “So then she spent the whole week being nervous and, instead of talking to her in private like a human. I just blasted her on stage, which was very rude. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”
Charton laughed off the incident on social media, posting a picture of her serious face before the Emmys. “Here is the exact moment I realized I may have made a huge mistake by JOKINGLY saying ‘we can have another baby if you ever win an Emmy,’” she captioned the snap via Instagram.
Alongside a photo of her carrying her husband’s Emmy, Charton added, “And yes he also made me carry this one around all night as punishment for my lack of faith. Fair.”
