Frankie Muniz’s NASCAR schedule had him racing back and forth from the racetrack to the TV set to film the Malcolm in the Middle reboot.
As it turns out, there was an unbelievable amount of talent in the Malcolm in the Middle cast. Bryan Cranston went on to play the role of Walter White in Breaking Bad – which is considered one of the best TV shows of all time. And Frankie Muniz? He had some movies do okay post-Malcolm, but now it seems as though he’s really found his calling.
He’s a full-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver.
That’s right. Muniz traded in acting for the fast-paced life of a NASCAR driver. He’s been racing with the Reaume Brothers Racing team for the past couple of years, and he drives the number 33 truck. Now I don’t know much about the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, but I do know that my favorite NASCAR truck series driver is the former child actor that brought us all so many laughs with his performance in Malcolm in the Middle.
And this isn’t some sort of out-of-the-blue thing. Muniz was formerly a full-time driver in the ARCA Menards Series in 2024, where he racked up 11 finishes in the top-10, and even had one finish in the top-5. Translation: this career shift into racing is no joke, and he’s dedicated himself fully to this new endeavor.
That being said, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reprise his role as Malcolm when the reboot for the iconic family sitcom – Malcom in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair – was ordered. According to Entertainment Weekly, it was none other than Bryan Cranston who kept pushing for Malcolm in the Middle to come back. After enough pestering, Cranston’s wish came true, and the family that viewers fell in love with in the early 2000s returned to continue the Malcolm story.
You’d think that Cranston would have been the toughest actor to nail down for shooting, but that wasn’t the case. In reality, it was Frankie Muniz who had the most complicated itinerary… since he’s a full time NASCAR driver. Muniz says that, in order to film the show up in Vancouver, Canada, the production had to work around his racing schedule:
“I would film Sunday through Wednesday, fly Thursday, race Friday, and fly back Saturday. It was exhausting, but I also know how cool it is to have the opportunity to get to do this again, so I wasn’t going to complain at all. I am so thankful to everybody on the production for working around my NASCAR schedule.”
That sounds like quite the chaotic schedule for Muniz, and was probably only achievable because the series opted to keep it’s reboot relatively short. Four episodes is doable… but a full order of episodes? That would have been difficult for Muniz – and likely an actor of Bryan Cranston’s caliber – to commit to.
But all signs point towards the cast and crew being overjoyed that they got to get back together once more 20 years after the show’s initial run ended. And based on the trailer, it doesn’t look like they missed a beat. Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair’s four episode run will premiere on April 10 and stream on Hulu.
