Justin Barfield, who plays Malcolm’s older brother Reese on Malcolm in the Middle, said on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast that he was disappointed that his former co-star Eric Perr Sullivan was thrust back into the public eye, despite having turned down the role of Dewey in a recent series recast.
When Sullivan asked if he regretted his decision not to appear on Malcolm in the Middle, Barfield replied, “No, I know they asked him a lot of questions. They asked him about four or five times and every time he said no.”
“He’s a good person and I love Eric,” Barfield added. “I actually feel bad because he wanted to walk away from work and the paparazzi were looking at his pictures. And I was like, leave Eric alone. He didn’t want to come back on the show. There are no hard feelings.”
Sullivan, who played Malcolm’s youngest brother Dewey, was the only original star not to return for the reboot. Caleb Ellsworth-Clark took his place.
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Malcolm star Jane Kaczmarek, who played Sullivan’s mother on-screen, said the show had offered Sullivan a big payday if she returned, but she still turned it down.
Sullivan “studied Dickens and is a great student. They gave him a lot of money to come back and he just said, ‘No thank you,'” she said.
The revival of “Malcolm” follows Frankie Muniz’s titular middle child as he grows up to have children of his own. The drama intensifies when Malcolm is drawn back into the family’s orbit when his father, Hal (Bryan Cranston), and mother, Lois (Kazmarek), insist on attending his 40th anniversary party. All episodes are available to stream on Hulu.
