“Hey, is that the guy from ‘Malcolm in the Middle’?” a 20-something man whispered.
“Excuse me, are you Mal-colm?” a middle-aged woman asked hesitantly in halting English.
It was indeed Malcolm. Or rather, it was Frankie Muniz, the actor who starred as the child genius on the 2000s Fox sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.”
Cellphones were retrieved. Selfies were taken.
Muniz, 40, was strolling through the cavernous Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles on a beautiful March day. The other patrons had most likely been alerted to his presence by the small entourage of photographers and handlers trailing behind us. But it didn’t hurt that he looks so much like he did a quarter-century ago, when his pubescent face was plastered on bus ads and billboards.
His gigantic blue eyes get bigger and bluer the closer he leans, as is his tendency. Facial hair and a few crow’s feet are the only real signs of the passage of time. Muniz seemed unbothered by the idea that every gawking stranger knew him only as his TV alias.
“I never shied away from it. I never understand why people do,” he said. “It’s like, shut up. You are so lucky. Your show is going to end eventually. Trust me.”
But sometimes, the show comes back.
Twenty years after the “Malcolm in the Middle” finale aired, the franchise has been resurrected as a tidy, four-part revival, “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” premiering Friday on Hulu.
Most of the original cast returned, including Muniz; Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek, as Malcolm’s eccentric parents; and Christopher Kennedy Masterson and Justin Berfield, as Malcolm’s older brothers. (Erik Per Sullivan, who played a younger brother, Dewey, declined. His role is played by Caleb Ellsworth-Clark.)
In the revival, a more mature Malcolm has moved away from his dysfunctional family to live a peaceful life with his teenage daughter (Keeley Karsten). Then he gets sucked back into their chaotic orbit and must finally come to terms with his past.
It’s a bit of a reckoning for Muniz, too. After the “Malcolm” finale, Muniz had mostly quit acting. He drummed in an alt-rock band, owned an olive oil shop and became a professional racecar driver. Now, he hopes he can find a way to act and race — and still have time with his wife and 5-year-old son in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“There was a big world out there, and he wanted to experience a lot of it,” Kaczmarek said of Muniz. “You don’t get to sitting around the set of a TV show.”
AS WE WANDERED through the museum’s underground vault of vehicles spanning time and place, we passed a vintage Popemobile and a Volkswagen Beetle from “Herbie: Fully Loaded.” Elsewhere, we found a full-size replica of Lightning McQueen from the “Cars” franchise.
“I’ve got to take a picture of this for my son,” Muniz said, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Cars have long been an obsession for Muniz — by his estimate, he owned around 36 by age 18 — and as a child star he has long had the means to indulge it. He was discovered at age 8 by an agent while rehearsing to play Tiny Tim in a production of “A Christmas Carol” in Raleigh, N.C., near where he spent several years of his childhood. At the time, his mother was a nurse and his father worked at I.B.M.
He had never taken an acting class, and performing was one of several hobbies. But soon, “it just took over,” he said, and he began booking films shot in nearby Wilmington.
In the late 1990s, Muniz’s parents divorced, and Muniz and his mother moved to New Jersey, where he was born, to be closer to his grandparents and the New York audition scene.
Between gigs, he would go to Times Square and join the throngs outside of MTV’s “Total Request Live” studio, waiting to glimpse the show’s celebrity guests, like Hanson and ’N Sync, who would wave to the fans below.
“Three months later, I was the one waving down,” Muniz said.
In 1999, Muniz’s agent had scheduled his “Malcolm in the Middle” audition taping on the same day he was to film a Pizza Hut commercial. Annoyed that he might be late to a fun shoot, Muniz, then 13, scurried to the “Malcolm” session and begrudgingly rattled off his lines.
“I went in the room angry, frustrated and tried to phone it in,” he said. Fortunately, the comedy of “Malcolm” hinged on Malcolm’s exasperation. And Muniz was very convincing that day as an exasperated kid.
The series creator, Linwood Boomer, watched Muniz’s tape on the second day of casting. Muniz had read the lines “exactly the way I heard it in my head,” Boomer said. “Every joke was funny. It was like being slapped around.”
More than 22 million people tuned in when “Malcolm” premiered on Fox in January 2000. The second episode drew more. It was already the most-watched comedy on TV, and Muniz was catapulted into the upper echelons of child stars.
He spent the next six years in a whirlwind, filming seven seasons of “Malcolm” in Los Angeles, while also doing publicity appearances and side gigs. During breaks, he shot movies, including the popular teen flicks “Big Fat Liar” and “Agent Cody Banks.”
“I was not thinking of what was the best for the longevity of my career,” he said of the films. “I was thinking, What’s going to be cool to do for the next two months?”
At one point, his “friend group” consisted of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan in their “wild” clubbing era, he said. Still Muniz served as their designated driver and said he has never had a sip of alcohol or done drugs. Despite hanging out at the Playboy Mansion as a teenager, he added, he felt “pretty sheltered.”
When “Malcolm” ended its 151-episode run in 2006, Muniz was 20. He had been working since he was 8 and had amassed $40 million, he said. (Some of his flashier purchases aside, Muniz considers himself very frugal. “I haven’t bought a bar of soap in 20 or 30 years,” he said. “I just steal them from the hotels.”)
He was ready to walk away.
Muniz was already racing cars as a hobby, so, he began driving open-wheel racecars professionally and relocated to Scottsdale to escape the Hollywood hustle. He relished the black-and-white nature of racing compared with subjective assessments of his acting.
“It’s not someone’s opinion,” he said. “If I beat these guys, I beat them because I was better.”
But in 2009, he was involved in a crash that broke his back, ankle and several ribs. For the next 12 years, he set the sport aside. He acted periodically in a few low-budget movies and TV guest spots, and he appeared on reality TV shows, including “Dancing With the Stars.” He eloped with his wife, Paige, on a mountain in Phoenix in 2019.
It wasn’t until Muniz’s son, Mauz, was born in 2021 that Muniz decided to return to racing, this time as a stock car driver. “I was literally holding him in the hospital, and I had this weird thought of, ‘Who is my son going to grow up thinking his dad is?’ Because everything I had done was in my past.”
Signing on to the “Malcolm in the Middle” revival also felt right. Muniz had fond memories of his time on the original series, and Cranston was pushing to make the revival happen. Muniz said he looked up to Cranston “probably more than anybody in this business.”
Muniz’s only caveat: The six-week shoot had to accommodate his roving schedule as a full-time driver in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
ON THE VANCOUVER SET, Kaczmarek and Cranston were amazed by Muniz’s growth, as a person and as an actor. The new finale saw Muniz summon dramatic skills he hadn’t used much as a child, when he mostly recited his lines with little forethought.
“Bryan and I looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, my God, this kid can really act,’” Kaczmarek said. “I was really proud I had raised a fictitious son so well.”
Muniz is now roughly the age Cranston was when “Malcolm” began. For Cranston, watching Muniz interact with Mauz during a set visit was emotional.
“To see Mauz light up when he sees Frankie and jump into his arms,” Cranston said, “my heart was swelling because it’s like: ‘Oh, you’ve done well, son. You’ve done well.’”
And for Muniz, reprising the role was fulfilling in a way he didn’t expect. “It was the first time in my life that I was truly happy to have the label ‘actor’ next to my name,” he said.
The challenge will be finding a way to have it all.
Muniz spends most days solo on the road, traveling for races. (“I wonder if anybody else in the entertainment business goes to Texas Roadhouse and sits at the bar three times a week like I do?” he mused. “Everyone’s too bougie.”) While some in the NASCAR world jokingly refer to Muniz as “Mr. Hollywood,” Josh Reaume — a fellow Craftsman series driver who signed Muniz to his team — said he viewed Muniz’s entertainment background as an asset.
“Our sport really lacks personality, and he has a great personality,” Reaume said. “What’s so interesting with Frankie is the mesh of two worlds.”
Muniz would love to be recognized for another substantial TV role, perhaps in a drama. He is also intent on racing until his “expiration date,” as he called it, and he hopes eventually to earn a spot in the Daytona 500.
“I don’t know what will make me feel satisfied,” Muniz said as we returned to the museum lobby. “But I still know I have unfinished business.”
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