{"id":378610,"date":"2026-04-06T22:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T22:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378610\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T22:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T22:57:08","slug":"dewey-actor-from-malcolm-in-the-middle-rejected-buckets-of-money-for-revival-to-stay-in-harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/378610\/","title":{"rendered":"Dewey actor from \u2018Malcolm in the Middle\u2019 rejected \u2018buckets of money\u2019 for revival to stay in Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cMalcolm in the Middle<\/a>\u201d revival will debut this week with nearly the entire original cast, but the actor who first played Dewey will be conspicuously absent, with his former co-stars saying he turned down \u201cbuckets of money\u201d as he continues his studies at Harvard. <\/p>\n

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The new series, titled \u201cMalcolm in the Middle: Life\u2019s Still Unfair,\u201d kicks off Friday on Hulu after a nearly 20-year absence for the Emmy-winning sitcom. And to those fans hoping for the entire cast to return, well \u2014 life is unfair.<\/p>\n

Erik Per Sullivan, who played Malcolm\u2019s younger brother in the original series about a comedically dysfunctional family, has decided not to return. He is currently studying at Harvard and declined the offer to participate in the reboot.<\/p>\n

Jane Kaczmarek, who played the matriarch Lois on the show, told The Guardian<\/a> that Per Sullivan was offered a significant “amount of money” but chose to focus on academics instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s studying Dickens and is an incredible student. They offered him buckets of money to come back, and he just said, \u2018No thank you,\u2019\u201d Kaczmarek said.<\/p>\n

Additional insight came from the \u201cFly on the Wall\u201d podcast, where Bryan Cranston, who returns to his comedy roots to play bumbling dad Hal, shared that Per Sullivan was excited but ultimately chose not to take part.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to Erik, and I said, \u2018Hey, we got the show! It\u2019s going to come back.\u2019 He goes, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s fantastic!\u2019 And I go, \u2018Yeah, so we\u2019re looking forward to having you back.\u2019 He goes, \u2018Oh, no, no, I don\u2019t want to do it. But it\u2019s fantastic,\u2019\u201d Cranston said.<\/p>\n

Cranston, the Emmy-winning star of \u201cBreaking Bad,\u201d added in the podcast that Per Sullivan mentioned he has not acted since childhood and simply did not want to return to acting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s actually going to Harvard,\u201d Cranston said. \u201cHe\u2019s really, really smart, and he\u2019s getting his master\u2019s at Harvard right now. He said, \u2018Oh God, no, I haven\u2019t acted since I was 9 or something. So I\u2019m not into it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With Per Sullivan opting out, the role of Dewey was recast with actor Caleb Ellsworth-Clark.<\/p>\n

The original “Malcolm in the Middle” ran for seven seasons, produced more than 150 episodes, and earned multiple awards, according to IMDb\u2019s<\/a> episode list.<\/p>\n

The revival begins with Malcolm, played by Frankie Muniz, attending Hal and Lois\u2019s 40th wedding anniversary party, according to Hulu.<\/a><\/p>\n

Cranston has expressed enthusiasm about returning to his role on the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was seven great years of my life, in which I met the most wonderful people,” he told the Guardian. “There\u2019s no better job than going to work and thinking of how to be funny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cMalcolm in the Middle\u201d revival will debut this week with nearly the entire original cast, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-378610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}