Frankie Muniz got candid about how being booked and busy has affected his personal life — including how he shows up as a husband and father.
“It is very hard, I won’t lie,” Muniz, 40, exclusively told Us Weekly at the Tuesday, April 7, red carpet premiere for Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair. “Honestly, my wife [Paige Price] is a saint. She’s sacrificing so much for me to live my dream.”
Muniz, who shares a 5-year-old son with Price, is pursuing professional race car driving along with acting. He admitted he has a “hard time” being on the road 300 days out of the year.
“My family comes to a few of the races. They’re here this week [while I promote the show], obviously. But it’s hard to uproot them and take them all over the place,” the former child star explained. “I want my son to have a routine and his school and his friends and go to church. I’m not going to lie, it’s been very, very, very tough.”
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Despite the setbacks, Muniz is “constantly trying to be better at” being present for his loved ones. “I know I need to be better,” he told Us. “I know it’s not easy for her to be basically a single mother a lot of the time, if I’m being honest.”
He continued: “But I started racing again because I said I wanted to be an inspiration to my son — and I wanted to do it for him and for my family. There’s that fine line of, ‘Wait, I’m doing it for them, but it’s taking me away from them.’ It’s something that I wrestle with all the time. But I also know that when you have an opportunity, I want to take it because I’ve had times where I don’t have opportunity and you’re going, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t know what I’m doing with my life and I’ve got an amazing opportunity.’ I want to feel like I tried my best at it before I stop it.”
Muniz is hoping to find ways to be more present.
“There’s so much. I want to spend time with my son. But I’ve got to do banking, I got to catch up on the bills, right? There’s so many things that people don’t think of that you have to do when you’re gone,” he noted to Us. “I’m going to say this right now, I have to be better than I currently am. I know that 100 percent [my family] deserves it.”
Muniz and Price started dating in 2016, getting married in 2019. The couple welcomed their son in 2021.
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Two decades after the original Malcolm in the Middle series ended, Muniz is returning to his roots as Malcolm on Hulu’s revival, which premieres Friday, April 10.
“I couldn’t believe how comfortable and at home I felt in minute one of being Malcolm again. I was obviously a little nervous having stepped away from him for so long,” Muniz, who played the titular role from 2000 to 2006, told Us. “Getting to work with everybody, you want to have that same dynamic that people know from the show. But literally on the first day, I felt right at home in these four episodes.”
He continued: “What I was surprised about was how much fun I had getting to be Malcolm and getting to do all that. I remember being really — if I can talk about myself this way — just proud every day when we finished filming what we were making and what we were accomplishing each day on set. That felt really good because I hadn’t had that many times in my life as an actor where I genuinely felt like I got everything out of what I was trying to portray. I was really, really surprised and happy about that.”
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair premieres on Hulu Friday, April 10.
