Jon Cryer and Andrew McCarthy didn't shy away from discussing the long-standing animosity that came along with the spotlight of being young Brat Pack actors. And the two recently shared how they finally buried the hatchet as adults.
“When we did 'Pretty in Pink' together, we didn't get along because he was ad…” Cryer said Friday at a screening of McCarthy's new documentary, “Brats.”
“That's very true,” McCarthy said during the question-and-answer session, according to People.
The actors, who co-starred in the 1986 film written by John Hughes, apparently spent years on each other's bad sides, as did their high school characters Duckie and Blane, who harbored feelings for Molly Ringwald's Andie.
Cryer, 59, who won two Emmy Awards for “Two and a Half Men,” said a fateful meeting in 2012 at a greenhouse for “The View” helped them make amends. McCarthy, 61, who went on to direct films and television, confirmed that he apologized to his former co-star, with Cryer describing it as “a lovely moment.”
“It was lovely because it was like in a moment, it was so clear that we were teenagers and that didn't, that in no way defines who we are now and it was so lovely. It was immediately hot,” Cryer said.
Cryer, McCarthy and several other members of the Brat Pack reunited Friday at the world premiere of “Brats” in New York. The actors appear in the new documentary about what it meant to be part of that group, which received its sensational nickname from a 1985 profile of Emilio Estevez. The actors, billed as Hollywood's Brat Pack by writer David Blum, starred in the 1980s films “St. Elmo's Fire”, “The Breakfast Club”, “Sixteen Candles” and “About Last Night”, among others.
McCarthy got Cryer, whom he described as “Brat-adjacent,” Estevez, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Lea Thompson to sit in for interviews for the documentary, which begins streaming Wednesday on Hulu. (Other members of the famous clique include Judd Nelson, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon and Nicolas Cage, with Matthew Broderick, Matthew Modine and Kevin Bacon at their side.) Blum is also interviewed in the film, which is based on McCarthy's 2021 memoir “Brat: An '80s Story.”
“If you came of age in the 1980s,” McCarthy says in the “Brats” trailer, “the Brat Pack was near the center of your cultural consciousness. But for those of us who experienced it from the inside, the Brat Pack was something very different.”
The “The Resident” and “Good Girls” actor laments how his career and that of his cohort were “scarred” by that 1985 New York Magazine article, leading him to hate the Brat Pack for decades.
Appearing Monday on “Good Morning America,” McCarthy said he used the documentary as “an opportunity to reconnect with the old gang,” most of whom he hadn't seen in more than 30 years, and talk about the infamous nickname and its professional ramifications. While the public welcomed the group, the industry reacted negatively.
“It was a pivotal moment in our lives and neither of us had talked about it before. So I thought it would be good to see how everyone felt about it,” he said. “It was crazy when it first happened to us, we all hated it and over time it has become a wonderfully iconic and affectionate term. I just wanted to see what everyone's relationship was with him, because it's like a relationship. It has followed me, I listen to it every day. “
The “Weekend at Bernie's” star said she hadn't seen several members of the pack in years, let alone hung out with them. She was surprised that her co-stars were willing to talk about the nickname, suggesting that even 10 years ago, they probably wouldn't have discussed it easily.
McCarthy, who described himself as a “loner,” said he last saw Lowe about 30 years ago and Estevez at the premiere of “St. “Elmo’s fire.”
“Our lives just took us somewhere else. Because of the Brat Pack, what happened initially was that we perceived it as something so negative that we all scattered,” she said. “Because of the name, it kind of ended it a certain way, and then the audience knew better and embraced it and just took it into their hearts, and it took on a life of its own.”
