Why Kaczmarek Said Yes to the Reboot

Jane Kaczmarek explains why she said yes to Hulu's Malcolm in the Middle reboot the moment Bryan Cranston brought it up.

She was ironing in Pasadena when the call came, a detail she mentions because she loves ironing and because it captures the life she's built since the original show ended. After Malcolm wrapped and her marriage ended, Kaczmarek put her career on the back burner to raise her kids. She worked with the Pasadena Educational Foundation to support music in public schools. She did theater, including multiple collaborations with Alfred Molina, among them Long Day's Journey into Night.

Rumors about a reunion had circulated for years. She had always said no. Then Cranston called. Show creator Linwood Boomer had a story worth telling, Boomer's longstanding bar for coming back. Kaczmarek calls Cranston one of the most remarkable humans she knows, unchanged since his Canoga Park junior-college acting-class days. She points to his Breaking Bad run, his work at the National Theatre in London, his collaborations with Ivo van Hove.

Her read on why Cranston wanted it: 'I think he's tired of killing people. He just wants to go back to being a dad.' She wanted to go back to being the mom.

The opening scene of the reboot, she tells Rich, is her shaving Cranston's body. He's not wearing a stitch. This leads to a digression about privacy pouches and the bees episode from the original series, Cranston wearing a suit covered in 25 pounds of live bees, getting stung in a sensitive spot, standing through it.

Kaczmarek turns to her own experience doing physical bits on the show. She had just given birth to her second child when they shot a water park episode and was suddenly faced with wearing a swimsuit on camera at 43. That's when she discovered body doubles. Her stand-in had just had twins, was in incredible shape, and did lunges while nursing. Kaczmarek marveled at her and promptly started using the double whenever Lois had to get wet, stand, or get soaked by a sprinkler.

The portrait she paints is of a reboot that isn't coasting. Cranston pitched it. Boomer wrote toward a real story. Everyone's older, and Kaczmarek sounds genuinely delighted to be Lois again.