My Girl.
You’re crying already, aren’t you?
A corner of your brain immediately cued up Anna Chlumsky screaming “he can’t see without his glasses!!!” as she’s hauled bodily out of the funeral parlour away from Thomas J’s kid-size coffin and now you’re crying.
It turns out that you’re not the only one who was scarred for life by the 1991 coming-of-age classic that lures you in with cuteness and then punches you in the heart with a lethal fistful of bees.
According to Macaulay Culkin, who played Thomas J, even his real-life mates aren’t immune to the film’s emotional power. (Just like Thomas J wasn’t immune to those bees.)
“For years and years and years, I’ll get two or three calls a year from friends, usually female, crying because they’ve just watched My Girl,” he says in a new interview with Vulture alongside fellow 90s icon Devon Sawa.
““I know you’re okay — I just wanted to make sure you were okay, though!” I’m alive, I’m alive.”
He also says that the constant rumours that he’s died – which peaked again after a 2015 comedy sketch where he looked deliberately gaunt and strung-out – are “f**king hilarious”.
“I die all the time. That’s fun. That’s always great. The worst part is when I have to reassure people. My mom calls me and I say, “No, I’m alive.” My friend Regina cries, and that sucks. Otherwise, it’s f**king hilarious.”
In both cases, it’s not actually 100% clear whether he’s joking or not.
The whole interview is based around his wrestling-style real-but-fake online feud with Sawa, and they spend the whole chat taking the piss, as well as talking fairly seriously about being famous pretty much their entire lives. It’s an amazing read.
It seems like Mack, as he now likes to be known, is living his best life.
But it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who still worries about him a little.