American actor Frankie Muniz is clear: “Mexico is Malcolm’s number one audience”, the character that brought him international fame 26 years ago, and this Wednesday he presents in the U.S. the revival of this television classic with the intention of continuing to connect with Mexican families.
“It’s the biggest audience we have, I would say that here and in France are the biggest audiences for Malcolm, but Mexico is definitely number one,” the 40-year-old actor told EFE on a red carpet in the Mexican capital for the premiere of ‘Malcolm in the Middle: Life is still unfair’.
With the idea of betting everything on the Mexican audience, Frankie Muniz traveled to Mexico on Tuesday with his brothers in the fiction, Justin Berfield (Reese) and Christopher Masterson (Francis), to get to know the national culture and meet the Spanish dubbing actors, among them Magda Giner, voice of Lois (Jane Kaczmarek).
“The reason the show is so successful here is because they did a great job. Many people in Mexico have never heard my voice,” said Frankie Muniz, who highlighted the work of Carlos Diaz, Malcolm’s dubber.
The television success, based on the story of the Wilkerson family and broadcast from 2000 to 2006, was based on its comic tone and its cast, headed by actors of the stature of Bryan Cranston (Hal), but also on its ability to portray the problems that marked the generation of the nineties: family dysfunction and the economic precariousness that affected the middle class.
Although Frankie Muniz moved away from television sets to pursue a career in professional motorsports, he remembers well what it was like to act at the age of 14 in ‘Pilot’, the first episode of the series that connected with the “big families” that, although considered “dysfunctional” or “crazy”, at heart “care about each other”.
Now, 20 years after ‘Graduation’, the last episode of the seventh and final season, they return with this revival featuring almost all the original cast, except for Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan).
The new installment also incorporates new characters, including Malcolm’s daughter, played by Keeley Karsten, and Kelly (Vaughan Murrae), the family member who identifies as a non-binary person.
“We asked ourselves, ‘How is this going to work? Because a lot of us hadn’t acted in 20 years, and how are these new characters going to fit in,'” said Berfield, who summarized that, in the end, the cast reunited as if time had not passed and warmly welcomed the new characters.
With this brief four-episode return, the Wilkerson family awakens the nostalgia of an entire generation and brings Malcolm back closer to the audience, breaking the fourth wall.
Since its premiere on April 10, reported Agencia EFE, the series -available on Disney+ and Hulu in the United States- has become the most watched series of the year, reaching 8 million views globally.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
