A few years ago, Frankie Muniz was in the news because he had a stroke at 26. And then another stroke a year later. On Monday’s episode of Dancing With The Stars, he revealed that because of that, and the nine (!) concussions he’s suffered, he has serious memory problems, as detailed by Entertainment Weekly.
“It makes me a little sad,” Muniz said on the show. “Things pop back into my mind [that] I should have remembered.”
The show also included an interview with his former TV dad, Bryan Cranston, who marveled at how much Muniz has experienced in his life. “Frankie was a TV star, then he became a race car driver, and a drummer in a rock band. I said to him once, ‘What are you going to be, an astronaut next? You are doing all the things professionally that everybody dreams about.’”
“I’ve gotten to do anything that I really wanted to do,” Muniz replied. “But the truth is, I don’t really remember much of that.”
All that brain trauma might explain why he’s on Dancing With The Stars, honestly. It’s either that or poor money management. You don’t see many actual celebrities on shows like this. Dame Judi Dench isn’t going to show up on Celebrity Rehab anytime soon.
“Truth is, I don’t remember much [of my time on Malcolm]” said Muniz, whose girlfriend Paige keeps a daily diary for him. “It almost feels like it wasn’t me.”
To be fair, we’ve also pretty much forgotten about Malcolm in the Middle. Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek are pretty much the only people to be in more than a handful of episodes and make it out with their acting careers intact.