Frankie Muniz Says Dancing With the Stars Exaggerated His Memory Loss

Frankie Muniz said his health issues were blown out of proportion when he competed on ABC's Dancing With the Stars in 2017.

By Cydney Contreras Jul 20, 2022 8:29 PMTags
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Frankie Muniz isn't trying to call anyone a big fat liar, he just wants to set the record straight.

The Malcolm in the Middle star opened up about his poor memory while competing on Dancing With the Stars, but he's now saying that those remarks might've been exaggerated for dramatic purposes. "For the 'Most Memorable Year' episode, they told me my most memorable year was 2001," he shared on the Pardon My Take podcast July 18. "And I go, 'I don't know what to say,' and they're like, 'Why?'"

Frankie simply didn't remember a lot from that time, but when the Dancing With the Stars producers edited his response, they made it look like he has "zero memory of anything."

E! News reached out to ABC and Dancing With the Stars for comment and didn't hear back.

And once the story was out there, it spread like wildfire and Frankie felt it was too late to say anything. "I remember I was Malcolm," he said. "But I did a lot of stuff and I don't remember everything."

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People were more inclined to believe Frankie had amnesia because he'd also shared that he was suffering from mini strokes, which caused difficulty speaking and vision loss. But he's since learned that these health issues were caused by severe migraines.

Eric McCandless via Getty Images

"I like to now talk about it because I have a better understanding of what it is," he said, adding, "People come up to me all the time and they're like, 'Do you know who you are? Your name is Frankie Muniz.'"

Frankie first addressed the confusion in an interview with the podcast Wild Ride! hosted by Jackass star Steve-O, saying that even he began to question if a larger issue was causing his memory troubles. But after processing it all, he realized, "I just think it's the fact that I did so f--king much in that time frame that, of course, I can't remember all of it."

ABC

To be fair, Frankie really has done a lot in his 36 years of life. In addition to playing the lead role in Malcolm in the Middle, he starred in the Agent Cody Banks movies and Big Fat Liar

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