“Malcolm in the Middle” is back — but one familiar face walked away from a major payday to return for the hit show.
Erik Per Sullivan, who played the titular character Malcolm’s younger brother Dewey, turned down “buckets of money” to star in the Disney+ reboot, according to his former co-star Jane Kaczmarek.
Instead, the former child star, now 34, has focused on academics, pursuing a master’s degree in Victorian literature at Harvard and staying out of the spotlight.
“He’s studying Dickens and is an incredible student,” Kaczmarek told The Guardian. “They offered him buckets of money to come back, and he just said, ‘No thank you.’”
The four-episode revival reunites Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, Bryan Cranston and Kaczmarek as Malcolm’s parents Hal and Lois, along with Chris Masterson and Justin Berfield as Malcolm’s older brothers Francis and Reese, with the story now following a grown-up Malcolm raising a daughter.
Speaking to The Post in November 2025, Muniz revealed Sullivan is “very happy in the life that he’s created outside of the entertainment world.”
“He made the decision that he didn’t want to get back into it — which we completely respect,” he said, adding that no one from the cast wanted to “force” Sullivan “to do something he didn’t want to do.”
“We had his blessing from day one to have the role be in the show and recast it. So I hope people aren’t too upset that he didn’t come back, but it was by his choice.”
Sullivan starred in “Malcolm in the Middle” from 2000 to 2006. He hasn’t acted since 2010, last appearing in the crime thriller “Twelve,” and has largely stayed out of public view since then.
In April 2025, Sullivan was photographed out in public for the first time in 18 years when he was spotted leaving his house in Boston to grab a coffee.
The show later tabbed “Fargo” actor Caleb Ellsworth-Clark to portray Dewey in the reboot.
“And then Bryan Cranston really kind of took the lead in pushing it. But early on, we sent out an email, me and Bryan, to everybody kind of saying like, ‘Hey, if this happened, would you guys be interested?’ Just to gauge.”
“And we knew early on that Erik was not going to be apart of it,” Muniz added.
