Macaulay Culkin Opens Up About Michael Jackson, Divorcing His Parents, And People Thinking He's Crazy
For starters let's cover the aesthetic of the interview photoshoot... I'm sorry to get vulgar with this & objectify him but two words come to mind...
HOT. PATOOTS.
Even Freddie Prinze Jr. declared him a member of #TeamHandsome so I must be right. He's lookin' fantastic these days.
So fantastic in fact that he's landed the cover for Esquire's March 2020 issue along with his first in-depth interview in years... But why?
Does he have a movie or book coming out?
No.
Some new product to push?
Nah.
Any major projects in the works that need some press love?
Nope.
So why interview him? Is he still relevant?
YES.
And not just because the author of this blog is biased & continues to quote Home Alone on a regular basis twenty years later.
For people from my generation movies like Uncle Buck, Home Alone, Home Alone 2, My Girl, and even duds like The Pagemaster and Richie Rich (which I loved simply because he was in it & had a whole McDonald's franchise in his mansion) were HUGE.... and his celebrity throughout the 90s was insane. Safe to say Mack, as he prefers to be called now, has a place cemented in our pop culture & I think he always will.
As I grew up he stayed on my radar because a new rumor about him would crop up every few years. He divorced his parents! He was covering for Michael Jackson! He was hooked on drugs & near death!
The interview by editor Ryan D'Agostino addresses them all...
The whole conversation is deeply personal & D'Agostino also deftly & thoughtfully asked Mack about deaths that affected his life including Michael Jackson, his older sister Dakota, and John Hughes. This part really stood out to me:
John Hughes was special to Mack. Even fatherly, though he doesn’t like to use that word. When Mack was filming Richie Rich in Chicago, Hughes stopped by the set and said hello. Mack was physically tired, missed home, and felt uninspired by the movie he was in. (He didn’t make another movie for nine years.) A couple days later, Hughes called him to ask: Are you all right?
It hit Mack even then, as a child: It was the first time anyone had ever asked him that. In a professional capacity—whether he was all right. It was the last time he and Hughes ever spoke.
To be a kid in the spotlight & everyone is, in a sense, using you to make money or gain something for themselves, and no one is asking how you're doing… that has to affect you. All things considered, it's pretty remarkable that he turned out so grounded & self-aware.
These days he's not pursuing acting as much but he's still sharing his knack for humor.. One of his main current endeavors is BunnyEars.com which he funds himself:
He has described Bunny Ears as a cross between Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s new-agey wellness company, and The Onion, the humor website. It makes fun of self-help, and it also makes fun of the Internet itself, with headlines overtly designed to get traffic from people’s search terms.
Examples:
Exclusive: Macaulay Culkin Interviews The Swarm Of Bees From My Girl
6 Bathrobes Perfect For Doing Coked-Up Naked Karate
The Michelin Guide To Eating Ass
How To Tell Your Child They Were Conceived To A Papa Roach Album
So it turns out he's not a crazy, damaged, kook… But he is an admitted homebody with many pets, still enjoys ripping cigs (inside?!?!) and drinking (cheers), dabbles in video games & excels in the arts, and he's dating actress Brenda Song who he seems to be wildly in love with. (In the interview he says they are trying for a baby.)
I was happy to see he's found a comfortable groove in life following a rocky road, and glad that he managed to maintain his wonderful, wacky sense of humor along the way. Good vibes all around for one of my childhood favorites. If you're looking for an interesting read I'd recommend the whole thing HERE because I only scratched the surface.