The Malcolm in the Middle reboot had to rework its entire production timetable to accommodate Frankie Muniz’s life as a professional racing driver, and the effort involved was considerable.
Muniz, who is returning alongside Bryan Cranston, Jane Kaczmarek and Christopher Masterson for the four-episode Hulu revival, now competes full-time on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
His schedule proved the trickiest to work around among all the returning cast members, so the production shifted from a Monday-to-Friday shoot to Sunday through Thursday, freeing Muniz up to race on Fridays.
The logistics were, by his own admission, relentless.
“I would film Sunday through Wednesday, fly Thursday, race Friday, and fly back Saturday,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“It was exhausting, but I also know how cool it is to have the opportunity to get to do this again, so I wasn’t going to complain at all. I am so thankful to everybody on the production for working around my NASCAR schedule.”
The reunion has also given Muniz a new relationship with acting itself, one that feels markedly different from his childhood experience on the original show, which ran for seven seasons between 2000 and 2006.
“Returning for the Malcolm reboot series was the first time in my career as an actor that I was happy to have the label ‘actor,'” he said.
“When I was a kid, I just showed up and said the words and it all worked out. Now, I’m making a plan going into the scene. Doing the prep makes the process really, really fun.”
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair picks up with Malcolm having kept his distance from his family for over a decade, before being pulled back into their orbit when Hal and Lois demand he attend their 40th anniversary party.
The series streams on Hulu from 10 April, 20 years after the original Fox sitcom came to an end.
