CR 056: Mackenzie Astin: ‘In its finest form, this medium can really change people’s lives’
The actor on his many roles, from “The Facts of Life” to “The Pitt,” and the transformative power of the arts.
In 1985, Mackenzie Astin began a four-season run portraying Andy Moffett, the adopted son of Cloris Leachman’s Beverly Ann Sickle, on NBC’s long-running sitcom The Facts of Life. During his time on the show, Astin—who happens to be the son of actors Patty Duke and John Astin, and brother of actor Sean Astin—became a teen idol, frequently appearing in the pages of Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and BOP magazines.
And though he wasn’t invited to be part of a planned Facts of Life spinoff—a decision that probably worked in his favor, in hindsight—he’s continued to act steadily, with notable turns in an array of impressive projects, including The Magicians, Lost, You, Mad Men, Homeland, and hundreds of other titles.
I recently chatted with Astin about his work on HBO Max’s The Pitt, why he avoids social media, and how a college production of Our Town changed the trajectory of his father’s life.
SANDRA EBEJER: Your first appearance on The Facts of Life was 40 years ago. When you look back on your time on the show, what comes to mind?
MACKENZIE ASTIN: It’s weird, and it’s probably something I should talk about with a therapist, because I have scant memories of it. I have instances I can remember about the first couple episodes, but I don’t have a really strong throughline. And the fact that it was a long time ago, it really does feel like a different life.
This is classic nepo baby shit—I remember from the audition, it was down to me and another guy. My mom had taken me to it, and she and the director knew each other because they’d worked together on a sitcom. The audition process has changed a bit, but [back then] you’d have to do the final test and then wait until the other person is finished, so everybody leaves at the same time. We’re at the elevator and the director of that episode, John Bowab, comes walking out. He and my mom were both professionals, so there’s no [talking about it], but he winked at my mom. He gave this tiny indication that it had gone well. I remember that.
I don’t remember much about the filming of the first episode. I remember a little bit about doing press, because they were introducing two new characters that season. An actor named Ryan Cassidy and I were introduced at the same time, so Ryan and I did the press junket together, which was my first experience talking into a camera with an earpiece in, and you hear the show come on and you have your three-and-a-half minutes or whatever. I have some memories of that. And then there’s this big blank space, which is wild. I watched a couple episodes a couple years ago. I looked up episodes I had been in, and I don’t remember it. It’s so weird. It’s like it happened to somebody else.
I’ve spoken to other former child actors who have starred on well-known series and it’s always jarring when the series ends. Sometimes there’s relief, but there’s usually frustration that their success didn’t continue at the same level. How was it for you when The Facts of Life ended?
A couple of things happened. I played Little League. This is so silly—40 years later, and I’m still miffed about a Sportsmanship Award. There was an award that the Little League gave out to the kid who was the best sport, and one of my teammates won it a couple years before I was eligible and before The Facts of Life. I would have been 10 or 11. Watching this teammate of mine win that award, and the way that parents responded to the winning of that award and what that award seemed to mean in the room, I was like, “Oh, that’s my shit.” I had my sights on that.
Then I got a job on television. I missed a number of games during the season because I was grabbing biscuits out of the oven for Mrs. Garrett or whatever, so at a certain point the commissioner told my dad that I was no longer eligible for this award because I had missed too many games. I’ve seen my father upset a few times in my life, but this pissed him off. I remember sitting in my dad’s car, watching him talk to the commissioner. I can still see his physical body get mad at the commissioner because I was no longer in the running. So whatever. I didn’t win the Sportsmanship Award in 1984 and I’m still griping about it.
But it made me think about the experiences my mom talked about where she felt like she missed out on some of her childhood. And though I was working on a television show, and I [experienced] four seasons of all that child celebrity stuff, there was always a part of me that was like, “Am I missing out on a normal life?” I was able to work out a schedule whereby I was able to go to school in the morning and then leave junior high at noon and go to work. So I didn’t miss too much school, which was good, and I was still connected to my friends who were having normal childhoods. When the show finished, there was a part of me that was ready to not be doing show business stuff. My mom spoke a lot about the effect that not having a normal childhood had on the rest of her life, and that had an effect on me.
And then! I don’t know if you remember the end of the show, but there was an attempt at a spinoff. They were making Blair the new headmistress of the Eastland School and they introduced new characters that would be students at Eastland. They were also making Eastland into a school that had both boys and girls. Pretty good cast that they were introducing for this spinoff—Juliette Lewis, Seth Green, Mayim Bialik, Marissa Mendenhall—and it was interesting to me, Mackenzie Astin the actor, who was also playing Andy Moffett the character, who was a boy who was girl crazy, who was of the age that would be in the school, who would, within the context of the narrative of the fucking show, go to that school.
I was in the second-to-last episode. The way it worked, you would get the script for the next episode the night you taped the episode you were working on. That script showed up, and I wasn’t in it. I realized that Andy was not going to be going to the Eastland school. It crushed me. And that’s showbiz. You don’t get what you want. There’s all kinds of reasons. Maybe I was a pain in the ass. Maybe I cost too much money because I had been on the show for four years. But I wasn’t in it, and it broke my heart. It hurt. Still hurts, which is funny and absolutely supports the concept of not getting that Sportsmanship Award. [Laughs]
So the show finished, and I decided I was going to go back to school. It was a wonderful decision. I had a quasi-normal school experience. I started writing, I edited the school paper, and I played ball on the JV team, which is something I really missed when I was working. So it was a good thing. The transition back to a so-called normal life was easy because it was time.
Your family was a huge part of my pop culture upbringing—from The Patty Duke Show and The Addams Family to The Facts of Life and The Goonies. Was acting ever a family dinner table discussion topic?
All the time. My dad, who has always been an academic, wanted us to be cautious about missing out on our childhoods. If we were going to put our hats in the showbiz ring, it was imperative that we would go to college. I think my mom was actually stoked that there were more on the team. She didn’t disagree with my dad that education was important, but I think she was glad to have people at home with whom she could have these conversations. So yeah, those conversations existed at the dinner table, and invariably, it was easier to connect with my mom, because I liked making her laugh, than it was with my dad, who wanted me to learn something. [Laughs]
How’s your dad doing now?
He’s terrific. He’s 95 years old. He’s retired, finally. He retired at 92. He spent the year 2000 until 2021 teaching at Johns Hopkins University, running the theater program there, trying with all his might to have it turned back into a major. He graduated from Hopkins in ’52 with a major in drama. The origin story of how the world got Gomez Addams is, and I’m obviously biased, breathtakingly beautiful in terms of what it is that film and television and theater can do when it’s at its best.
He had a friend who was at Wooster College in Ohio, and he was gonna visit him. My dad was a math major in 1950. His dad was the director of the National Bureau of Standards, which is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Academia, math, physics, and a serious job was big in my dad’s family. So my dad had a friend in Ohio that he was going out to visit and his friend said, “Why don’t you come early? My roommate’s in this play. You should see it.” So my dad hitchhiked out to Wooster and saw a production of Our Town in which Thornton Wilder played the stage manager. And my dad had what he still refers to as a transcendent experience in that theater. He recognized that there was something about this thing where you sit in a darkened room in a community of people and you watch other people tell the story that was very powerful. Sure enough, Our Town touches on some of the interesting cosmic shit we all deal with. It is an examination of what the hell we’re all doing here, and for why and for what, and seeing Thornton Wilder play the stage manager knocked my dad’s socks off.
He went back to Hopkins, and he changed his major to drama. And so because of a production at Wooster College in Ohio in 1950 where Thornton Wilder played the stage manager, the world got Gomez Addams. And my father disappointed his father to no end, or at least that was the impression he got when he was 20 or so. But there’s a truth to the experience that my dad had, and there’s a truth to the sentiment that he continues to maintain, that in its finest form, this medium can really change people’s lives. It can introduce people to concepts and structures and behaviors and ways of life that are perhaps more evolved than stuff they have originally been exposed to. I’m trying to be diplomatic about saying people can learn how to be better fucking people by the stories that are told on stage.
So he decided, after a pretty successful career in television and film, to give back to the place where he had earned his degree. The theater program he ran was basically him and his wife and a single employee and this asshole [points to himself] showing up here and there. But there was some good that came from it. People took stuff from the classes that is valuable in their lives, which is the whole point of what my dad was trying to do, which was create value.
Speaking of art that has value, we have to talk about The Pitt. Your storyline stuck out because we’re at that age where our parents are getting older and we’re having to deal with the reality of losing them. How was it for you to play that role?
I was extremely lucky to book the part. I was lucky to work with the people that I was able to work with. I was fortunate to be involved in a production aiming to do what I believe that production is aiming to do. From my perspective, I saw an opportunity. In terms of the storytelling, this was an opportunity for people who lost parents during the part of the show that takes place in flashbacks, who didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to their parents in person, to see somebody else doing it and through that, process what happened to them. That was my take on it. It was giving audiences who didn’t get a chance to experience their own parent’s death in person because of [the pandemic] and to let them work that stuff out. In its finest form, that’s what storytelling does. It allows you to identify that which is universal, share in the experience that is universal, and reorient your experience in a manner that helps you better understand what it is we’re all doing here. It’s a powerful thing to be able to pretend to say goodbye to your parents. It’s a powerful thing to put yourself in a position to live that experience. It can be cathartic if you didn’t have that experience personally, and it can be informative if you are anticipating that experience because it’s inevitable. So it was a great part because it’s something that people recognize.
When playing a role like that, are you able to go about your day when filming is done? Or do you take the work home with you?
That’s the funny thing about this business. The somatic system doesn’t know that it’s pretend. You’re putting your body through these experiences, and your body believes you, so you do take it home. I closed off from other experiences while I was working on it. I didn’t hang out with friends much. I wasn’t very outgoing. It was a quiet time to sit within that experience. There were also some interesting connections to my own life, timing-wise. Obviously, it’s different, but our cat was really sick at the time, so it wasn’t hard to access the feeling that you have for a loved one that is deteriorating. So that was interesting, but that’s the job. That’s what you’re supposed to do. And we’re so coddled and so looked after and so fortunate and make enough money that it’s all worth it.
You know, the business has changed so much over the last few years, structurally, that we were all so grateful to have a job that we would take home whatever was necessary. When I got to the Warner Bros. lot, we were the only show there. It was crazy. Production is way down. So those of us who are lucky enough to get jobs try to recognize that good fortune.
Who are your influences as an actor?
There are a few performances that were big influences on me as a child. Dr. Strangelove is a pretty incredible motion picture. The stuff that [Peter] Sellers does and Sellers does and Sellers does is spectacular. Sterling Hayden is ridiculous in that movie. George C. Scott is ridiculous in that movie. That movie is a large influence on my life.
Paul Newman’s performance in Slap Shot is something I think is terribly misunderstood and overlooked, much in the same vein as some misunderstandings within the context of the film. It’s written by a woman, which I think is important. What people remember from the film all these years later is the Hanson brothers—the bloody guys that beat everybody up. Within the context of the film, I felt like the screenwriter was trying to explain through comedy that that sort of behavior in life and on the rink has a negative impact, but the crowd fucking loves it. What’s that 10,000 Maniacs song? “If lust and hate is the candy, give them what they want.” It’s the same concept. What people remember about the film is these guys beating the shit out of each other and what the screenwriter, I think, was trying to say is that guys beating the shit out of each other is not a very good influence on children. [Laughs] Anyway, Newman is so good in that movie. There’s so much going on there, and it’s funny. George Roy Hill is a fantastic director, and Nancy Dowd wrote a great movie. So, that performance is pretty big. [Gary] Oldman, [Tim] Roth, and [Richard] Dreyfuss in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead had a lasting impact on me. That’s a play and film that is just exquisite. The bones of it are so good, the words are beautiful, and those three guys were at the tops of their games at the time.
At this stage in your career, are there any particular roles that you really hope to get?
Hmm. I’ve had the good fortune to work with a lot of women directors and a lot of women writers, and I appreciate that opportunity. I feel like there’s a perspective and understanding about humanity that can sometimes be overlooked by guys. So I like those jobs. I like jobs where the character’s written by a woman, and the show was directed by a woman.
Are there any roles you’ve done that you’re particularly proud of?
Love & Death was a great part. This was a story that was told a couple of times in quick succession about a woman, Candace Montgomery, who was acquitted of murder in Texas in 1980 or so. I got to play the attorney that tries the case against her, and it was a terrific part and a terrific show with terrific people. I cross-examined Elizabeth Olsen, which was great. I had Jesse Plemons on the stand. That was an incredible experience for me, just to be in the room with that caliber of actor and not fuck it up. That one I’m really proud of and not a lot of people saw it.
There’s a thing that’s happened four or five times now in my career where I end up in a production that has a nearly identical production being released at the same time. In other words, the exact same story told by different people. I was in a movie called Wyatt Earp. It came out in ’94 and at the same time, there was a film called Tombstone about the exact same stuff. And then I was in a movie called The Last Days of Disco, which came out right around the same time as a movie called 54 about the exact same thing. And then The Loudest Voice about Roger Ailes and Fox News, and that was released at the same time as a movie called Bombshell. Love & Death was, I think, in production prior to [the miniseries] Candy, but Candy shot theirs quicker and got it edited and out quicker, so it snagged some of the zeitgeist. Which is too bad, because Elizabeth Olsen is so good in it, Jesse Plemons is so good in it. Anyway, it’s this funny thing, timing-wise.
We started the conversation talking about The Facts of Life. If you could go back to that time and give yourself any advice, what would you say?
Tricky question, because there are aspects of who I am now that are the kind of traits you only get by making mistakes. I would tell myself to listen to my brother when he says, “Don’t spend all the money and you can live off the interest.” Because I had a gang of cash when I turned 18, and at the time, I was like, “Fuck you. I’m gonna have fun.” And then I ran out of money and turned to him for help, and he was there to help, which is great. Maybe I would have smoked less weed. Maybe I would have gone to college. But any one of those decisions puts you off into a different thing.
I noticed you don’t have social media. In these interviews I’ll often link to the person’s social media accounts, but you aren’t on there.
No. I was a while ago, and it was fun, and then it was less fun. I was never on Facebook, which for a while people were like, “What the hell is wrong with you?” And years later, they’re like, “Hey, that was a good idea.”
Not having it seems very freeing. But it’s just so unusual now.
Yeah. I’ve taken the road less traveled a lot, for better or for worse. I think for better. I look out this window and I’m so grateful that my wife and I have ended up where we are, in this little house surrounded by trees and foxes and deer and groundhogs and hawks and owls. So, yeah, with the social stuff, there’s part of me that wants to get in there, and I respect people that I see that get in there and go for it. But I don’t know if I can handle people coming at me. I prefer to look at the leaves.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You might also enjoy…
