Frankie Muniz Looks Back Fondly on His New Jersey Childhood

In addition to acting, Frankie Muniz has found a second career in stock car racing. Photo: Grindstone Media Group/Shutterstock.com

Frankie Muniz became a household name as the tremendously gifted and perpetually dismayed Malcolm Wilkerson. In real life, he was a child of the ridges and woods of New Jersey.

The Malcolm in the Middle star, who rose to fame when he was 14, was born at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and grew up in Wood-Ridge. Those biographical details have often been transposed or mixed up, causing some confusion over the years.

“People don’t understand what I’m saying,” Muniz says. “But my mom still lives in Bergen County. My grandparents, unfortunately, just passed away after living in the same house for 70 years in Wood-Ridge. But yeah, that’s my childhood, for sure.”

The actor, now 40, reprises his breakout role as Malcolm in the series revival Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, which premieres April 10 on Hulu.

When he was a young child, Muniz and his family moved to North Carolina for his father’s job (his parents later divorced). That’s where he started acting, but he landed the role of Malcolm, a middle schooler with an IQ of 165, when he was back in Jersey.

“I was taking the NJ Transit bus into the city every day to go do auditions and all that,” he says. “So that’s like the good old days to me.”

An 11-year-old Muniz had returned to Jersey for the summer to audition. He had four to six tryouts per day, and his bookings were plentiful.

Muniz in Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair. Photo: Disney/David Bukach

“I ended up getting kicked out of the school I was supposed to start in the fall,” he says. “It kind of snowballed to where we just never left until I got Malcolm, and that took us out to L.A.”

But Jersey followed him out to the West Coast, in a way.

“I think it’s funny; if you watch the first season or two of Malcolm, I have a pretty—not a super strong—New Jersey accent, but, like, I definitely didn’t fit with the rest of the cast, accent-wise,” Muniz says with a chuckle. “I unfortunately lost it a little bit just because I’ve been gone for so long.”

One thing Malcolm hasn’t lost, 26 years on: its delightful cringe factor. The first part of the four-episode revival starts just like its Emmy-winning Fox series premiere back in 2000. In a direct callback, Malcolm’s dad, Hal Wilkerson, played by Bryan Cranston (who took on the role before his career-changing run on Breaking Bad), appears almost completely naked in a scene where his wife, Lois Wilkerson, played by Jane Kaczmarek, shaves his back hair. Only this time, the back hair is white.

As for the adult Malcolm, life is “fantastic.” He says so in one of his typical direct-to-camera moments. “You wanna know how I did it? All I had to do is stay completely away from my family.” Malcolm has his own life—a daughter, Leah (Keeley Karsten), and a job running a charity.

Muniz, on the other hand, relished being with the Wilkersons again. “I remember being so excited when we were talking about the possibility of the show coming back,” he says of the revival from series creator Linwood Boomer. “Like all the fans, I wanted to know what Malcolm and his family were up to.”

Still from "Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Not Fair"

Photo: Disney/David Bukach

Muniz filmed the new episodes in Vancouver with his old costars, including Cranston and Kaczmarek as well as Christopher Masterson and Justin Berfield, who play Malcolm’s brothers Francis and Reese. (Caleb Ellsworth-Clark takes over as Dewey from Erik Per Sullivan, who has since left acting.Vaughan Murrae plays Kelly, Malcolm’s youngest sibling, who is nonbinary.)

“I cannot explain to you how amazing it was that first day of filming, because it was instant. All of us fell right back into our characters as if no time went on,” Muniz says. “Normally, when you make a movie or a TV show or whatever it is, you hope people are going to watch it, you hope people will like it. I think…people are really looking forward to it. So I hope they love it. I think they will.”

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The travails and adventures of Malcolm and his lovingly unhinged family were an immediate success.

Malcolm in the Middle’s 2000 premiere episode, which aired after The Simpsons, claimed 23 million viewers (ratings climbed higher the next episode). Muniz received an Emmy nomination for lead actor in a comedy series in 2001, when the show was nominated for outstanding comedy series.

“As a kid, I just showed up excited to be there, and said what was on the paper, and it worked,” he says. “Where now, even though I fell right back into playing Malcolm again, the way I prepared every day, or, like, learning my lines, or thinking about how I want to do certain scenes, I never did that as a kid. I just care more now. I want to do the best job I could possibly do.”

In the 2000s, Muniz’s acting career accelerated with lead roles in films like the Agent Cody Banks movies. He’s since enjoyed another career in stock car racing, most recently driving a Ford F-150 pickup truck on Team Reaume in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He also became a family man, marrying actor and model Paige Price in 2019 and welcoming son Mauz Mosley Muniz, now 5.

Today Muniz lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, but retains his Jersey identity.

“I’m proud to be from New Jersey,” he says. “What I find really funny is how New Jersey’s just such a small state, but so many people I meet are from New Jersey. You’ve got, like, an instant bond with so many people.”

Wherever he is in the world these days—he was just holding court with Malcolm fans in Mexico City—he’ll always remember the time he spent with his grandfather in Jersey.

“He was a construction worker,” Muniz says. “He’d be like, ‘I built that freeway.’ Everywhere I go I see my grandpa, because he helped build the roads and stuff in New Jersey. He started working at the Meadowlands, at the racetrack, and so I would go there with him. I started golfing with him at the driving range right in the Meadowlands. I have memories of that kind of stuff, or riding my bike. There was a bike shop in Hasbrouck Heights, and when I first started acting, I made a little chart of how much money I needed to get this lime green GT Performer. It was, like, the coolest bike in the world. I would go there and look at that bike every day.”

And yes, he finally bought the bike.

“I just remember roller skating and riding bikes and being out and on the Boulevard and getting pizza at Emilia’s. That was one of my favorite spots in Wood-Ridge. I have just so many memories of being a kid there.”