By India McCarty
One familiar face will be missing from the upcoming MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE reboot, but there’s a very good reason — Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey, will be too busy attending classes at Harvard.
“I talked to Erik and I said, ‘Hey, we got the show! It’s going to come back,’” Bryan Cranston, who plays family patriarch Hal, said during an appearance on the “Fly On The Wall” podcast. “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.’”
This news wasn’t too surprising to fans of the show. Sullivan stopped acting when he was 19, preferring to step out of the spotlight.
“He’s actually going to Harvard,” Cranston shared. “He’s really, really smart, and he’s getting his master’s at Harvard right now. He said, ‘Oh no, I haven’t acted since I was 9 or something. So I’m not into it.’”
Sullivan isn’t returning, but the rest of the cast will reprise their roles, including Frankie Muniz, Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Masterson and Justin Berfield.
Muniz had also stepped back from acting in the last few years, focusing on his career as a NASCAR driver, but he decided to come back for the Disney+ four-episode series.
“Just wrapped filming the MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE reboot, and man, I’m still reeling,” he posted on X and Instagram. “This experience was straight-up incredible — like stepping back into Malcolm’s wild world but with all the love and chaos cranked to 11. Reuniting with the cast, getting to know some new characters, laughing till it hurt, and making new memories on set felt like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. It went by so fast, like a blur of perfect moments. I wish it could go on forever.”
He continued, “I’m so happy to have gotten the chance to relive being on this show with a greater appreciation of what we were making knowing how many people around the world truly love Malcolm and his family. Another big thing I am taking away from this experience is how much I truly love being an actor. I never officially felt like that label fit me, but now I wear that label proudly and hope to do so much more of it in the future. I am so sad to have to say goodbye to my MITM crew, I love each and everyone of you.”
Cranston also spoke about what returning to MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE has meant to him, telling PEOPLE, “Slipping back into that character of Hal for me was so rewarding — I missed him. It’s been almost 20 years since we said goodbye. And he’s a sweet, lovable man. He’s really a lovable guy, and it was fun to see all my whole family back together. It was great.”
MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE fans might be disappointed not to see Sullivan in the reboot but understand why the former child star prefers to stay out of the spotlight.
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