Frankie Muniz has shared the memory of meeting his Malcolm in the middle father Bryan Cranston on screen for the first time, and it involved a skin-colored Speedo.
speaks to PEOPLE ahead of the show’s revival, Muniz, 40, recalled that Cranston was the last cast member to be confirmed, and his role as Father Hal wasn’t finalized until the morning of their first shoot together.
“The first scene we shot is from the pilot where Jane [Kaczmarek]or Lois, shaving Hal’s back,” Muniz said.
“And he came in wearing a skin-colored Speedo and said, ‘Hey, boys, I’m going to be your father.'” He paused before adding, “Of course, pretty awkward.”
Muniz was only 13 at the time and was already buzzing with the excitement of landing the lead role.
Meeting the rest of the cast had been exciting enough, but Cranston’s entrance was something else entirely. What no one could have predicted at the time was how central the character of Hal would become to the show.
“Hal was originally supposed to be such a small character… kind of like an afterthought,” Muniz said. “But Bryan is such an incredible actor and made the show, I think.”
Behind the scenes, the cast quickly fell into what really felt like a family, pranks included.
They attached clothespins to each other’s backs, played the circle game with enough force to leave bruises and fought over a foosball table until the production team replaced it with a table tennis table.
“It was a bad idea, you couldn’t get us to film,” Muniz recalled. “We probably could have gone pro.”
Saying goodbye to it all seven years and 151 episodes later hit harder than Muniz had anticipated.
The cast was given about a month’s notice that the show was ending, which he said helped. But nothing prepared him for the final day.
“It didn’t have any effect on me like I thought it would until literally the last shot on the last day,” he said. As the cameras rolled on the final scene, two or three hundred crew members who had worked on the show over the years gathered on the set.
“I remember starting [to cry] when they started rolling and it wasn’t for the scene but it worked really well for the moment. It was really hard to say goodbye.”
The wrapping party brought its own quiet feelings. Muniz and Jane Kaczmarek were the last two people to leave the soundstage that night.
“It hit you at that moment that, wait, everything that I’ve known for most of my life… is coming to an end,” he said.
Malcolm in the middle: Life is still unfair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
