Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Macaulay Culkin greets me at his front door in pink pajamas with bunnies on them.
He offers me Veuve Clicquot served in a glass purloined from United Airlines.
When Devon Sawa arrives, both of us are given rubber duckies we choose at random from a bag.
Sawas is part duck, part Care Bear; mine isMinecraft-themed.
Culkin provides the personality to front it.
Sawa briefly moved back to Canada and became a landlord.
It was as if our childhood were eating itself.
It started when Sawa discovered Culkin was selling DEVON SAWA shirts on his website.
Sawa considered getting lawyers involved.
Sawa said he was going to rob a bank dressed like Culkin.
In turn, Culkin started aGoFundMecalled Devon Sawa Needs Our Help.
Now the boys are hashing it out in person and finding they have more in common than child stardom.
At first I went,What the fuck?
!Then I had to really think.
Macaulay Culkin did I do something to him back in the day?
Did I see him at a club?
On the podcast, I started introducing myself, Hello, Im Devon Sawa.
DS: There was a Christmas video, wasnt there?
DS: Im not on TV!
MC: Im a film actor!
Werent you onNikitaat the time?MC: Werent you onSeaQuest?
MC: It just became a fun thing to keep doing.
I figured hed fall for my charm.
DS: It never felt like it.
They didnt like my questions.
DS: What kind of questions?
And they said, Go back and talk about the movie.
Well, which would you rather be?MC: Oh, black-and-white cow.
DS: The alternative being something worse than a cow was your thinking?
DS: I would roll the dice and go for something better.
Id go with not a cow.
MC: Would you want to be a tree?
DS: Trees live for a long time, man.
MC: Thats what Im saying!
Youd be sitting there for a couple hundred years, stationary, nothing but your thoughts.
DS: Have you readThe Giving Tree?
DS: What an awful book.
Speaking of Seth Green, you both co-starred with him in movies I think are criminally underrated.
But which movie is more underrated:Party MonsterorIdle Hands?DS: Well,Party Monsters not underrated.
MC: Honestly, Ive never seenIdle Hands,so Ill pick it.
DS: I will say, no bullshit, that Seth Green is top-two people Ive ever worked with.
MC: He is great.
DS: You dont stop smiling the entire time youre on set.
Witty jokes hes got a lot of.
Him and Jason Schwartzman.
I didnt know what he was doing.
MC: Because youre not funny.
DS: Because Im not funny.
[Mack cackles.]
Everything I say has to be on the page.
But Jason Schwartzman would bring his own bag of stuff he would pull out.
We would be talking in the middle of a scene, and hed yell, My dick is hard!
Thats not on the page.
I couldnt keep up with that.
Ive gotten a certain amount of comfortable in my own skin.
It was actually Seth who said, Youre a funny guy.
You should do comedy.
And my entire foundation was built on comedy.
I just started being relaxed.
Was that difficult?MC:Even with ballet, it was very 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
They tell you what to do, and you mimic.
The same thing with scripts.
Its all on the page.
Thats where I came from.
I trust myself to be sharp and smart, funny and weird.
I trust in myself not to embarrass myself.
DS:Thats the wayIdle Handsworked.
I was the straight guy.
MC:Straight man is a great place to be.
MC:I call that the Stripper Pole: Everyone dances around you, and youre the stripper pole.
I love being the straight man.
Matthew Broderick is one of the best straight men there is.
DS:And its still comedy.
MC:Thats the thing with comedy in general.
You have to go for it, you have to believe it.
DS:I approachedIdle Handslike I was in a Scorsese film.
Seth will tell you, we had a tough time on that set.
Seth had to step between me and the director a couple times.
All theScreamsandI Know What You Did.
DS:This director, Rodman Flender, he came fromParty of Five.He directed nothing butParty of Fiveepisodes.
And he was a big horror fan.He wanted it to be very, very serious.
AndIwanted to makeEvil Dead 2.I asked, Can I do some business with dishes?
Its a throwback toEvil Dead 2,let me smash dishes!
This movie has to be me as Elmer Fudd, and this hand as Bugs Bunny.
MC:That makes sense.
DS:I wanted to go a little further.
MC:I just texted Seth.
Told him you say Hi, even though you didnt.
I wanted to be the center of attention all the time.
MC: I love the conciseness of that answer.
Like, its just so short and concise.
I was an energetic kid.
My father, he really wanted my older brother and sister to go into acting and so forth.
Just take Mack with you, too.
I showed up and I made a jackass of myself during the first audition.
Ended up sitting on the table, marching around like a jerk.
And next thing you know, I get hired for that.
Sometimes people like it, sometimes they dont.
How did you navigate having on-set tutors?DS: I absolutely hated it.
I loved doing movies in the summer.
I didnt like doing movies during school.
I remember that clearly.
I had to spend summer vacation working.
And I would have much rather been a latchkey kid, running around the neighborhood being a jerk.
DS: Theres a lot of things I regret not doing.
Like, I never went to prom.
MC: Summer camp.
I gotta say, prom was terrible.MC: Yeah, its highly underwhelming, I agree.
Ive been to, like, three proms, and Ill tell you, you didnt miss much.
And Im telling you, theyre not that great.
Like I spent summers in Savannah, Georgia, and worked in Calgary and Toronto and California.
You have no comparison.MC: I know what my experience was like, but yes, I dont know.
That goes with anybody.
What could I have been if blankety-blank happened or didnt happen?
I cant speak for that.
I just kind of did things, and I did things and people liked it.
If anything, Im incredibly blessed to be this blase about it.
Actually, my girlfriend calls me that all the time.
It sounds like a great wrestler name: Im the Symptom.
DS: It is a good name.
MC: Listen, whats it like to breathe in and out?
No, for real, whats it like to eat, drink, shit?
Its not like I have a choice.
People view me a certain way, and I cant help that.
Im never going to explain myself in that kind of way.
Its just the way it is.
DS: There are some celebrities that wont embrace it.
If theyre promoting a movie and someone brings up the past, theyre like, Dont bring that up!
I dont want to talk about it!
I had to make peace with it very early.
I get Can I keep you?
which is a line fromCasper at least three times a week, as if no ones tweeted it before.
Im alive, Im alive.
Whats the weirdest rumor youve heard about yourself?MC: I die all the time.
The worst part is when I have to reassure people.
My mom calls me and I say, No, Im alive.
My friend Regina cries, and that sucks.
Otherwise, its fucking hilarious.
DS: I get the same thing, except they think Im Brad Renfro.
DS: I dont think they would.
Ive already dealt with that in my life.
Thats my tombstone: NOT AT THE OSCARS.
MC: They leave me off every year, and its really fucking embarrassing.
Both of you were incredibly famous before you got to fully form your identities.
Now everybody has the opportunity to blow up their own spot in their teens and overshare.
How do you negotiate that as adults sharing online and being a person?MC: I hire people.
DS: I should hire people.
MC: Its a brave new world out there.
I cant tell you how many actor-y friends tell me, Oh, its between me and this person.
And all other things being equal, theyre going to pick this person because they have more Twitter followers.
I started Twitter in 2008, didnt ever think it was going to be what it is now.
Im scared to go back and look at my 2008 Twitter.
Its a bunch of dudes that were just talking about the UFC.
It was MSN Messenger.
Hey, are you on here?
Yeah, Im on here.
There were hardly any people.
And now I probably use it more than I should.
How often do you tweet?
DS: Five or six times a day.
You talk about your kids a lot on Twitter, Devon.
Is that a conscious move?
DS: Its something I thought would never happen.
Its so much fun.
I love letting people on Twitter know that not only am I a father but Im a real father.
More times than not, my kid is swinging from the chandelier.
I love the responses I get from that.
MC: When will you give your kid a phone?
DS: Not yet.
Hopefully not for as long as possible.
So it feels like a phone, and you might kind of go, Heres your phone.
MC: Has your oldest asked for a phone yet?
DS: No, and he shows no interest in them.
MC: That drives me crazy.
Im not a parent, but I dont want to raise my kid that way.
Ive seen those YouTube videos where they hand a kid a book and he starts trying to scroll it.
MC: Give them aSuper Mario Bros.and see how hard it is to hook up.
DS: They wouldnt know to blow on it!
MC: Oh, thats actually a great thing.
Cartridges everyone blew on them, right?
Thats how you got them to work.
MC: Howd you learn that?
Everybody did this independently of each other.
Everybody in the world did this.
Did it disseminate from one person?
Theres something really interesting about that.
How did we spread this?
DS: I think it evolved from the VHS and Beta.
Because you would blow into the VHS or Beta and blow the head off.
People wonder the same thing about the Richard Gere gerbil story.
But also … it sounds real.
Its stupid enough to sound real.
DS: Everyone knew that rumor!
I was a child in Indiana.
And then it went all around the world.
Theres something really funny about that.
DS: But it was probably like telephone.
It started with something like Richard Gere gave a gerbil a kiss.
And by the time it got out, he was prepping with Vaseline.
So I dont know.
I am glad there werent camera phones.
MC: As soon as they put cameras on phones, I thought,Its a fucking disaster.
This is the worst thing thats ever happened to me.
Aside from each other, who are your favorite hate-follows?DS: What do you mean by that?
DS: I mean, other than Trump.
I dont agree with Trump.
MC: Do you follow him?
DS: Yeah, I still follow him.
Its like a train crash.
I want to be the first one to read his spelling mistakes.
Other than that, if someone is driving me insane, I dont have time for that.
I hope no one hate-follows me.
MC: We should tweet that out: How many of you guys are hate-followers?
Do you put pictures of your kids on your Instagram?
DS: I do.
But Im very selective with what I put out.
MC: And your wifey is also on the socials?
DS: I try not to put her on as much.
I dont know why.
Im just afraid people will say mean things?
Out of every 1,000 people, theres one turkey who just wants to have a go at you.
MC: Put up their own devonsawa.com, that sort of thing.
Theres always one guy printing shirts with my name.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
