Frankie Muniz is on this season of the Australian version of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here. I kinda love that he’s just doing his thing because he wants to. Frankie doesn’t need to appear on reality TV shows – he’s a millionaire who still gets residual checks from Malcolm in the Middle. In fact, in a recent episode, Frankie told his fellow contestants that every few weeks, he gets residuals with a list of every country playing it in syndication.
Frankie has been sharing a lot about his days as a child star. Last week, he talked about how lucky he was to have had a very positive experience on set, despite having a lot of friends who had very negative experiences. I think the general feeling was a sense of relief that a set involving Bryan Cranston wasn’t problematic (or worse). Well, turns out that not everything was always perfect on the Malcolm set. According to Frankie, there are two episodes of the series that he’s not in. Frankie told his co-stars in Celebrity that he “walked off set” thanks to tensions created by “certain people.”
Frankie Muniz was the title star of hit sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, but now he’s explained why there are two entire episodes where he doesn’t appear after he walked off set. News.com.au website reports that the American former actor was sharing confidences with his campmates in I’m A Celebrity Australia when he revealed:
“There were two episodes I’m not in. I walked off the set.” And he explained his actions were because tension on set had reached a boiling point, because of the behavior of other “certain people.”
“Everyone was so afraid to stand up when certain people were controlling or rude or disrespectful. Like they walked on pins and needles,” he remembered.
“I was so mortified by seeing people afraid to stand up for themselves, I was like: ‘Say something.’ I didn’t care if they told me I was never going back, because it was worth it to me. It helped that the show was based around me.”
Muniz, who starred as middle brother Malcolm in the hit show from 2000 to 2006, retired afterwards to become a racing driver, and revealed he had become much happier since leaving behind the entertainment industry and LA.
Before entering the South African jungle for I’m a Celebrity, he told news.com.au:
“I never felt like I fully fit in the Hollywood world, even though I was in the world. I was nominated for Emmys and Golden Globes, and I was going to all this stuff, and I was there, and I was like, how am I here? I hated LA, so I kind of stayed in my own little world, my own little bubble. And moving to Arizona, I did it on a whim, and I realized immediately that I started looking up. I started enjoying looking at trees and birds in the sky. Going to the grocery store was a fun thing. You don’t get that in LA. It’s a miserable experience.”
Major props to Frankie for standing up in protest. I know it was easier for him to do that because the show centered around him and that gave him the power to do so with less repercussions, but the fact that he thought to do it for others speaks volumes to his character. I tried to figure out who these certain difficult people may have been. My first thought was Chris Masterson, brother of Danny. I think we can eliminate Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek because both have reputations of being professional. Reddit seems to think that this went down during the end of Season 3 because Episode 19 is a clip show and Muniz barely appears in Episode 22. Reddit also filled in some of the blanks, saying that before this clip starts, Frankie was complaining about what a pain in the ass assistant directors can be, specifically venting about two unnamed ADs that frustrated him. Given the full context, it’s most likely that they were whom he’s referring to. But as I’ve never been on a film or TV set before, I honestly don’t know how much power ADs have. Either way, I hope Frankie’s protest wasn’t for naught and the rude, controlling parties were booted off set.
Photos credit: Deborah Feingold/FOX / Avalon and via Instagram