Danny Pintauro played Jonathan Bower on all eight seasons of the ABC comedy “Who’s the Boss?” In April, when she was a child actor, she posted a photo of herself on Instagram revealing that she was working part-time as an Amazon delivery driver, which became a hot topic. Fans were shocked to learn that the classic sitcom star now delivers packages for a living, but Pintauro explained on a recent episode of the podcast Pod Meets World (via Entertainment Weekly) that it’s one of the few jobs he currently has to pay the bills because his acting job isn’t stable enough.
“When I posted the photo on[Amazon’s]Flex, I really didn’t post it…I couldn’t think about[people’s reactions]because everyone knows I’m working,” Pintauro said. “This is one of five different jobs I’m doing right now. We’re gig actors. Acting is one of six jobs.”
Pintauro said his Amazon delivery job pays around “$80 to $100” for a two- to three-hour shift, adding: “We have to do what we have to do to survive. We have to keep moving as humans. We’re all doing it. I’m no different from you in that sense. We’ve never been different from you in that sense. I’m not making money on residuals.”
The actor explained that he dealt with extreme fan reactions when he worked at Gap over the summer after “Who’s the Boss?” Finished running. “Someone brought in a hidden camera, took a picture of me folding my clothes, and said, ‘He’s already lost all his money, the downfall of Danny Pintauro!'”
Pintauro’s Who’s the Boss character Jonathan Bower was the son of Judith Light’s Angela Bower. The series, which ran for 196 episodes from 1984 to 1992, centered on Tony Miceli, played by Tony Danza, who becomes the Bower family’s live-in housekeeper and lives there with his daughter Samantha (Alyssa Milano). When Pintauro first revealed his job at Amazon, he wrote in the caption, “There’s no shame in staying on the move. Working hard while you’re not ‘working.'”
“The entertainment business has been so slow, so I’ve been doing what a lot of people are doing: coming up with it, appearing in it, taking the jobs that are out there, and continuing to create the work that I really want to do. 38 packages today!” he added at the time.
At the time, Pintauro told People magazine that “people overestimate what sitcom detritus from the ’80s and ’90s looks like,” and that’s why he was doing so much work. He added, “I invested a good portion of that money, but I also used a lot of it to pay for Stanford and get through my early 20s, so it’s not like I have an endless amount of money sitting there.”
