ARTNEWSPRESS: It was a creepy enough anecdote at the time, but since HBO’s devastating documentary Leaving Neverland, in which two victims said that Jackson had subjected them to years of sexual abuse, it seems particularly grim. Culkin shifts uncomfortably, but he has seen the question coming – he tells me that he realised I would ask him about Jackson before the interview. He points out that he doesn’t have media training, signalling that what follows hasn’t been publicist-approved.
“The only thing I can say is that I can’t really say anything and the reason for that is I can’t be helpful to anyone,” he says earnestly. “To me, it seems like there’s two sides to this thing and because I can’t be helpful on one side or the other, anything I say and anything that gets put out in print could only hurt somebody and there’s already a lot of really hurt feelings. There are already a lot of people who are in a difficult position and if I contribute in any way, it’s just going to hurt someone because I can’t actually help.”
He won’t be drawn any further, so I ask him about the recently announced plan to reboot Home Alone, news that takes him by surprise. “That kid would definitely be fucked up by now,” he says, adding that the original film “still holds up. It still makes me laugh and I can’t wait to show my kids.” Culkin’s wife, British former model Jazz Charton, is eight months pregnant, something that makes him “excited”. Would he encourage his child to follow his career path? “If the kid wanted to get into acting, I’d be all for it,” he says. “Not a lot of former child actors would want to put their kids through it.”
Culkin says he suffered a crisis of confidence at 20. After his acclaimed turn as a spoilt slacker in 2002’s Igby Goes Down, “I realised I’d been doing it for 14 years and I never once made the decision ‘Hey, I want to be an actor.’ So I flipped out and – you can check my IMDb – I didn’t work for years. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.”
It was only with Succession that he became comfortable with acting again. “We were shooting last season when I came home one day and I said: ‘I think this is what I want to do.’ It took until I was 35 and I had been doing it for about 29 years for me to go, ‘Hey, I think I want to be an actor.’” Besides, he adds, “baby needs food”.
Despite this newfound passion for who he is on screen, he’s still unsure about how he presents himself off it. “I’m terrible in print because I just sort of speak in these fragments and then it’s your job to try to piece it together and make some sense,” he says. Does he enjoy doing interviews? “I have a feeling you’re saying this because I’ve already fucked myself two or three times?” he laughs quizzically. But as Roman would put it, hell no – only with a stronger expletive.
https://www.theguardian.com
Benjamin Lee
