As a former child star himself, Macaulay Culkin gets it.
The actor, who rose to fame at 10 years old, playing Kevin in the holiday classic films Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, has a message for those making documentaries about child actors in Hollywood.
“Dear ID, Please take it easy on the kiddos. We’ve all been through the wringer. No one wants to feel exploited. Don’t pile on. Love, Macaulay Culkin,” he wrote on Instagram Monday, alongside a photo of Investigation Discovery‘s logo.
Culkin’s post was seemingly referring to the network’s Hollywood Demons docuseries’ second episode, titled “Child Stars Gone Violent,” which aired Monday night. The show looks to “uncover the shocking stories of celebrities’ lives. Some rise to fame only to fall from stardom, while others reveal fame’s tragic, dark side in ways one could never imagine,” according to its description, with the second episode centered on child actors from the 1990s. It featured former child actors Brian Bonsall (Family Ties) and Dee Jay Daniels (The Hughleys), and Home Improvement and That’s So Raven producers.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Investigation Discovery for comment.
The “Child Stars Gone Violent” episode came a year after ID dropped its bombshell Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV docuseries, which received two Emmy nominations. The series exposed the toxic culture behind some children’s shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including alleged misconduct on some Nickelodeon sets.
Culkin — who shares two children with his fiancée, Brenda Song, also a former child star — stepped away from the spotlight in 1994 at 14 years old after starring in a string of hit films, including the Home Alone films, My Girl, The Good Son and Richie Rich. Around that time, Culkin’s parents were also in a custody battle over the actor and his six siblings, including recent Oscar winner Kieran Culkin, following their split, with Culkin’s trust fund also at stake. Since then, he has been estranged from his father.
“We didn’t want to go with my father,” Culkin told Esquire in 2020. “It’s always misconstrued, that I ‘emancipated’ myself from my parents. I legally took my parents’ names off of my trust fund and found an executor, someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their fucking pinkie in the pie. But the next thing you know, the story was that I divorced my parents. I just thought I was doing it cleanly—taking my father’s name off, taking my mom’s name off, so my opinion is unbiased. And when I did that, the whole thing kinda ended a lot faster.”