Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz has confirmed the reason why fans didn’t get reunited with Erik Per Sullivan after someone else was cast for the role as Dewey in the reboot of the show.
Few TV revivals have generated as much anticipation as Disney+ bringing back Malcolm in the Middle nearly 20 years after the original run ended.
On April 10, the streamer launched a four-part continuation that picks up with Malcolm and his brothers as adults, coming together for Hal and Lois’ 40th anniversary celebration.
Several familiar faces returned, including Jane Kaczmarek, Bryan Cranston, and Frankie Muniz, along with Justin Berfield and Christopher Masterson.
But Erik Per Sullivan, who originally played Dewey, did not come back for the new episodes.
Muniz has now shared why Sullivan made that choice, and why the production decided to recast the character instead of removing him.
Speaking on the Zach Sang Show, Muniz said Sullivan had put significant effort into building a “normal” life after the sitcom wrapped in 2006, and the team wanted to honor that.
Addressing why Dewey wasn’t simply written out, Muniz explained that keeping the character present mattered—regardless of whether Sullivan returned.
He said: “We knew from when we originally started talking about the idea 10 years ago that Eric, who played Dewey, was probably not going to come back.”
He added that ‘he really worked hard after the show ended’ to ‘have a normal’ life.
Muniz said Sullivan is content with where he is and may not have wanted to step back into the spotlight, but was still supportive of the revival moving forward. Explaining that Sullivan ‘likes where he’s at’, he said: “And to kind of come back and open everything back up again, I don’t – I don’t know if he’d want to do that. So, we respected that, but he was like, ‘Please, please recast it. Please do it.’”
Muniz also emphasized there were no hard feelings, noting there was ‘no negativity or animosity at all’, and pointed out that Caleb [Elssworth-Clark], who plays Dewey in the reboot, bears a strong resemblance to Sullivan.
Muniz joked of his similarity to Sullivan, telling the podcast host: “Bro, you can’t tell me that’s not Eric.”
He added that recasting made more sense than removing Dewey entirely, because viewers would be happy to see the character included, rather than focusing solely on whether Sullivan was the one on screen.
This isn’t the first time Sullivan’s absence has been discussed by the cast. In an interview with The Guardian, Kaczmarek said Sullivan—who later attended university and earned a degree—declined a lucrative offer to return.
She said: “They offered him buckets of money to come back, and he just said: ‘No thank you’.”
Cranston previously told Entertainment Weekly that he spoke with Sullivan about the reboot, only for the conversation to head in an unexpected direction.
“I talked to Erik, and I said, ‘Hey, we got the show! It’s going to come back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ And I go, ‘Yeah, so we’re looking forward to having you back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t want to do it. But it’s fantastic’,” Cranston said.
Either way, Muniz and the rest of the cast have made it clear Sullivan is simply choosing a different path—and they’re happy to see him doing what’s best for himself.