Frankie Muniz Spills on His Wild Pivot From Child Star to NASCAR Driver

Frankie Muniz was one of the biggest child stars of the 2000s, leading Malcolm in the Middle and starring in movies like Big Fat Liar and Agent Cody Banks before he even turned 20. Then he stepped away from Hollywood, moved to Arizona, and built a completely different life as a full-time NASCAR driver.

Now he’s doing both.

The Malcolm in the Middle reboot premieres April 10 on Hulu and Disney+, and he filmed the entire thing while racing every weekend in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. On Good Guys, he sits down with hosts Josh Peck and Ben Soffer and gets into all of it.

Below are the highlights, adapted from the episode.

Frankie Muniz Spills on His Wild Pivot From Child Star to NASCAR Driver

How did you go from being a child actor to a full-time NASCAR driver?

“I can actually thank Brian Cranston for me becoming a race car driver, as odd as that sounds. He did the pro-celebrity race that they used to do in Long Beach for years, and he came back on set that next day and was like, ‘It was the most incredible thing. If they ever ask you, you have to do it.’ So the next year they asked me, I was 18 and I did it and I won the race. And that feeling was incredible—like magical. And a pro team approached me and was like, ‘Hey, we’d like to just give you a test for fun.’ Not thinking I was going to have a career in it, but like, ‘Oh, we’ll put you in a real race car. You can just drive around and have fun.’ But by the end of the test, I was faster than their pro driver. So they signed me to a two-year development deal and the next thing I knew, I was a professional race car driver. So that was 2004, 2005.”

What brought you back to racing after stopping for over a decade?

“I raced until 2009. I got pretty badly hurt and I did no racing up until my son was born in 2021 and I had this weird, like, I was holding him in a hospital and I was like, ‘Who’s my son gonna grow up thinking I am?’ Everything I’ve done is in my past. Like, I used to be an actor. I used to race cars. And I felt like I had unfinished business in the racing world and I was like, alright, I want to go back. I want to give it a shot. I want to dive in 100 percent ’cause I want him to see me working for something that’s really hard.”

What does it actually feel like inside a NASCAR race car?

“It was only like 75 degrees out but inside the race car, it’s like 160. And I burned 4,400 calories during the race. My average heart rate was like 172 for like three hours and 10 minutes. You get out and it’s as if you jumped in a pool. You’re just drenched in sweat and it’s not very comfortable…

…I wear these booties on my feet that are basically what an astronaut would wear, like heat shield booties, because otherwise your feet literally will melt to the bottom of the car. It’s that hot just from the engine and all the components…In St. Pete this last week, four drivers went to the hospital for heat exhaustion after the race.”

You famously turned down a Martin Scorsese movie. What happened?

“I would read maybe 50 scripts that I would get to choose from for the hiatus that we had from Malcolm. And I always just picked what I thought was gonna be the most fun. I was a kid and my agents and managers were like, ‘No, I really think you should do this Martin Scorsese movie.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, Big Fat Liar, bro. Like, Amanda Bynes’…get the girl, save the world. Hell yeah. Are you kidding?”

You tweeted that you hate hearing actors talk. What prompted that?

“I don’t live in Los Angeles, okay? I moved to Arizona in 2008. So I’m not really around, like, the industry per se, right? So I was staying in this hotel. Like, I’m here in L.A. right now, you know, doing a bunch of stuff for the Malcolm release and stuff like that. And I went to the restaurant downstairs and this guy sat kind of next to me and he was talking to the bartender and it turns out he’s some actor on, I don’t know, let’s call it CSI or whatever. And I just couldn’t, I was like, there’s no way people actually talk like that and have these conversations and think that people care that much…It was just so pretentious and I was like, oh my gosh, shut up. Nobody cares…

…You know, my wife is amazing, right? She’s super supportive of everything I do, my racing, my acting, whatever it is. But she reminded me the other day. She goes, ‘I don’t know why actors get all high and mighty, right? ‘Cause back in the day, the jester was the lowest of the low. You know what I mean? On the totem pole.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, thanks for reminding me of that. I’m nothing.’”

What made you finally feel proud to call yourself an actor again?

“When I finished the Malcolm reboot, when we finished filming, I had such an amazing time. It was so fun to get to be the character again and be with everybody again and get the opportunity to, knowing that the impact that the show had on millions of people all over the world, to get to go back into that world is so surreal. But it was the first time when I finished filming that I was so happy to actually have the label of actor next to my name. ‘Cause I’ve always been like, ‘Oh, I act but I also do these things.’ But I was like, no, I’m an actor. That was awesome and I hope people love it.”

Listen to the full episode on Good Guys with Josh Peck and Ben Soffer, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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