Here's what it's like to go to school with Macaulay Culkin.
Macaulay Culkin is an icon.
Somebody who hit child stardom very early and then kind of lived
his own life. Has now come right back into the fold of the zeitgeist.
He was just walking the runways of Fashion Week and looking amazing,
and he is a really interesting human being.
His family is also super interesting.
I was really lucky to go to school with them
at a school in New York City where I commuted to every day.
I went about an hour and a half each way from my hometown in Connecticut
to New York City, and then back again after I had like
dance class or auditions or whatever right after school. When I was young,
he was a really influential student at the time
because he was the highest profile student.
There would be like paparazzi hanging outside of our school
trying to get to him.
He would try to evade the paparazzi.
It was it was really tricky because he was a very sweet soul.
Like always.
Basically, my school is like the Fame School,
but it was right next to the Fame School.
The Fame School is a public school called LaGuardia.
And essentially, you can't work when you go to a school like LaGuardia.
You have to be there as a conservatory type high school.
So it's an arts high school.
But what my school was doing was allowing people
to actually work from set and be able to go to a brick
and mortar school when they weren't on set .
A lot of the kids were high profile,
not only just in acting
recording artist, but they were also like amazing ballet
dancers that were in the pre college Juilliard program for the musicians.
And then the ballet girls all ended up in ABT and stuff like that.
I mean, you name it, we had an equestrian,
a protege violinist from Taiwan who was performing for like the king
of her country or something.
And we had the most amazing, eclectic, talented group of people.
You did not want to see the talent shows at the professional
children's school because it wasn't the same as normal schools.
We're talking super competitive.
And so these
these kids were all put together in this little brownstone of a school,
and the faculty did a really great job of trying to protect the high
profile students while also holding them accountable for
Listen, you need to have a deadline.
You need to, you know, think about, where are you going to go to college?
And they did a fantastic job and probably still to this day.
What I witnessed in terms of the Culkin family when they were there
was that they were very private and very protective as a school
for and on behalf of them, as students and as a family.
The family lived like very close to the school.
The daughter Quinn, the youngest daughter,
Quinn, was a good friend of mine for like,
you know, a few years and I still have seen her in New York.
She is awesome. I've always loved her.
She never really was in the industry,
but she went to the school nonetheless because it was smarter
for the parents to just put everyone in the same school, right?
And if you can afford it, go for it.
You know, Kieran was there
and now it's crazy because I see him popping up all the time
with Succession, which I watch with my husband.
And it's so interesting to see when you grow up with people
what they use of their personality into their art form.
Kieran was always like a really snappy, kind of smart,
sarcastic guy, and it's perfect for the character
that he's playing in Succession and he's so good for that role.
And I also think that that role is really good for him
because I think it's showing people that he's not just the short younger
brother of, you know, Macaulay .
It's like he is his own talent, and he's been around
in the indie world for a long time.
The way that it was in my school, though I will be
honest, is like, if you were famous or if you were really successful,
then you were popular.
And so their family was obviously very popular.
But then they're boys and there was like, no boys at the school
was all really cute, pretty actresses and ballerinas.
So the boys that went there had just like the time of their lives.
Are you kidding me?
They had a blast
with all these pretty girls that had no boys to choose from.
Obviously, like they they kind of clicked off
and they were like considered one of the popular kids.
And I'll never forget they would always go
and smoke cigarets with a group of kids
who are all very cool people nowadays.
And that's the cool thing is that even though they were like popular,
they were always pretty good people.
And I just never really saw myself as a part of that clique.
But I don't think it was because I wasn't invited into the clique.
I think it was just because I was really shy and really insecure.
Anyway, so Macaulay, I'll never forget, like
one of the first and practically only times that I had seen him
in the school was like when I was taking the stairs.
There's like such a rush in between the bells
and they ring and stuff for all the kids.
So you see a lot of the kids that are upperclassmen
and the underclassmen kind of like meld.
And then they always kind of tease the underclassmen, which I didn't get
until I was there before moving to California about a year .
And I was like.
Oh, I get it now, this is why they tease the underclassman.
I was teased by Macaulay Culkin.
He moed at me and I didn't really understand why.
But he's like Moomoo, and he looked at me and he was mooing
and there was some sort of an inside joke.
And how could you ever forget that when
Macaulay Culkin moes at you.
He had a really good group of friends
that, dare I say,
is probably still in touch with him now because one of his friends, Brett,
I just feel like they're his ride or dies.
And that's the thing I'll say about, like New York,
is that there's some like really strong loyalties
that are valued very heavily in like the New York mentality.
People just kind of become family.
And so I do feel like
by going to this school that the Culkin family had a lot of support
and they went through a really hard time, you know?
Kieran actually had a fire that happened.
I guess I don't know
if he was responsible for it, but he had almost got really hurt
because there was a
there was a fire
right next to the school because I said they live really close.
The fire was really dramatic.
It made the news.
Knowing the family even sort of in a casual way,
it was sad to see that was happening to them.
You know what I mean?
Certain other things came about, you know, with Macaulay struggle
in general and like,
there was always speculation of how much he was using or abusing
and like his sort of artistic eccentricities came out
and I don't think people understood him
and they didn't know how to accept him.
And again, it was a very different time
where mental health wasn't really valued.
Understanding it, talking about it, philosophizing about mental
health was not something that was being done.
They were making Macaulay this like poster child
for what it meant to fail at being given everything
and then just ruining it for yourself, which is just not the case.
He was obviously in New York.
He was obviously there.
I don't know whether he was trying to work or not.
I never was privy to what his goals were.
But like I said, the family was there.
They were in New York and they were living their lives.
It is not easy to make the transition from such an iconic childhood role.
You know, I've had Mara Wilson on my cooking show and she's amazing,
but she'll be the first
to tell you that as you're growing up and you're looking different
and you don't fit into that box exactly the way that you did.
That's not cool.
Let's just say the family came from very humble beginnings,
and due to McCauley's success, they were able to go to New York
and all that stuff, right?
It’s a lot of pressure for a young person to provide money for the family.
It really is.
Even if they're conservatively spending,
I mean, that still puts the onus on the child to keep working.
And so I think at some point,
depending on the child,
you can have a breakdown whether you have the support
of friends and family around you or not, like there's trauma there.
And then if you have a society
that's just constantly berating you,
again you're going to have some sort of a mental break.
For a long time
like he just grew into a very different kind of person
than everyone knew him as just like childhood sweetheart,
everyone's first crush like angelic boy from home alone,
which we all still know and like, hold dear to our hearts.
And yeah, I mean, he does look still similar.
But what's cool about him is that he challenged the beliefs
of everyone who thought that they knew who
he was going to turn out to be or what he was going to do.
And he ended up doing really interesting artistic things
traveled around with like some pizza band
where they like
wore pizza faces and, you know, did a lot of really random things
for a long time.
And then recently, he
he had a baby with Brenda Song, which is so random in and of itself.
I would never have seen those two
together, and they just seem really great.
He was on her show that I love.
He's a great actor.
It just goes to show you that, like, people's minds are very fixed
and small when it comes to seeing artists, but artists themselves,
if they really are true artists, they want to break out of that.
You know what I mean?
And so there's a natural flow and a natural frustration
that comes from the experience of being famous at a young age.
Props to the school.
You know, I will always love the school that I went to.
The faculty was really gracious to me
and that I had to go and live in California to finish off my degree
ended up going to a really good school with all that support.
All you can do is really be grateful.
I've always loved the family and I've always loved that
I was able to spend time with Quinn and I think she's doing really great.
So I'm here to tell you that I'm obviously very happy
that the Culkin family is thriving and doing well.
They certainly have had hardships,
and I don't think
they ever really deserved them because they're good people
and they're very, very artistic and very talented bunch of people.
I will always feel sort of kindred to people that I've either
worked with or known in sort of like a personal way.
Those are the bonds that you just kind of can't break from your mind,
even if you're not bestie besties with people.
I'm just the type of person that gets invested
in other people's well-being, and I really do wish them well.
So I guess the moral of the story is, even if you think you don't know
somebody that well, it takes zero sense to wish them well.
So do it.