By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’ve spent the last several months watching the entire run of Malcolm in the Middle on repeat because I don’t know how to sleep without old sitcoms lulling me into a coma. Whenever I mention to friends how much Malcolm in the Middle still holds up, I always hear the same reply, which is, “It’s a shame about Frankie Muniz,” in reference to the rumor that suggests how a number of head injuries and “mini-strokes” have cause the former child star to have no recollection of being on the show at all.
Though Muniz cleared the air in a revealing episode of Steve-O’s Wild Ride! Podcast that was recorded in 2021, his alleged memory issues remain a part of the cultural zeitgeist, even though his explanation of how a simple statement he made while working on Dancing With the Stars spiraled out of control is now out in the open.
Frankie Muniz Isn’t Living In Memento
The rumors about Frankie Muniz’s memory loss started when a pre-recorded interview from Dancing With the Stars had him answer the question, “what was your most memorable year?” Clarifying to Steve-O that the producers of the show wanted him to talk about 2001 because he was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his work on Malcolm in the Middle, Muniz answered, “Man, I don’t remember what happened in 2001,” and the media rumor mill came up with the narrative that he suffers from some sort of amnesia. These rumors quickly took off because the Agent Cody Banks star had a number of underlying health issues that he thought at the time were mini-strokes.
Frankie Muniz also had gone on record in the past explaining how he suffered from nine concussions while he was a kid who played a lot of sports, which only gave the rumors more weight because he has actually experienced lapses in memory around the times he experienced those concussions.
Clearing The Air
Deciding that he didn’t want people to think that he was struggling with his day-to-day life and on the verge of death anymore, Frankie Muniz gave a detailed rundown of his health issues on Steve-O’s podcast, clarifying that the mini-strokes he thought he was experiencing were actually migraine auras after finally getting a proper diagnosis. Being a chronic migraine sufferer myself, his health issues started to make a lot more sense because I fully understand how you want to block out the entire world when you have a particularly severe episode. In the case of migraine auras, which are classified as minor seizures, they’re generally not life-threatening, and easy to manage once you know what the underlying issue is.
In reference to not remembering being on Malcolm in the Middle, Muniz explained in great detail that he was always an extremely busy kid while kicking off his acting career. Between the 12 to 14 hour days on the set, studying for school, interviewing the press, and maintaining his family life, the “Man, I don’t remember what happened in 2001” statement was his way of saying that he was so in-the-moment, that he simply doesn’t remember the day-to-day minutia of being one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.
What’s more, Muniz elaborated on the fact that he kept to himself when he wasn’t actively filming, and would go to his trailer between takes, meaning he wasn’t present on the set when scenes without him were being filmed. Additionally, he never actually watched the show after working on it, meaning that there are entire character arcs that he has no recollection of because he simply didn’t expose himself to them. In fact, when watching Malcolm in the Middle as an adult for the first time with his wife who never saw the show, Muniz stated that he was able to watch the series as a fan, not as somebody who starred in it, because he was actually seeing so many scenes for the first time in their proper context from an outside perspective.
In other words, Frankie Muniz does have minor memory issues surrounding the concussions he sustained as a child, but these memory issues are in no way related to his tenure on Malcolm in the Middle. As a self-proclaimed highly-functional individual who’s constantly pursuing business ventures, playing in bands, and even tearing up the race track as a professional stock car racer, Frankie Muniz simply lives in the moment, and forgets a lot of minor day-to-day details because he only focuses on what’s in front of him while thinking about the next big thing instead of trying to revisit the past.
Leave a Reply