On Monday’s Dancing with the Stars, Frankie Muniz got candid about his experience with memory loss — and how he’s learning to cope.
During the Most Memorable Year night, the former Malcolm In The Middle star, 31, touched on his many health issues and how they have led to problems with his longterm memory.
Speaking to PEOPLE after his performance with pro Witney Carson, which earned him a 24 out of 30, Muniz revealed his memory loss wasn’t always something he was comfortable discussing.
‘It’s something that I never really wanted to talk about, because I’m just me and this is my life,’ he said. ‘But we were talking about Malcolm [in the Middle] and how it started, and I don’t really have memories of being on the show.’
Muniz said all he recalls of starring on the hit Fox sitcom, which ran for seven seasons from 2000-6, comes from ‘seeing an episode.’
‘Over the past 10 years, my mom will bring up things like trips we went on or big events and they are new stories to me,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know what the cause of it is. It’s not something I looked into, I just thought it was how my brain is — so I thought it was normal. I didn’t know I should remember going to the Emmys when I was younger.’
‘I’m not a doctor person,’ he added. ‘Every time I go to the doctors they just tell me I’m crazy.’
Muniz, who suffered a serious car crash in 2009 while competing as a professional race-car driver, has also endured several concussions — but he says his health battle doesn’t affect his desire to work in Hollywood ‘at all.’
The star has also been working with his girlfriend Paige to help with his memory loss, and each day, she writes down what they do together in a journal.
‘She’s amazing,’ he gushed. ‘She literally writes because I get sad at the thought of losing the memories. So she writes in a journal that I can look at every day and it’s really cool, because it has amazing detail. She started doing that about a year ago and hopefully she’ll continue. She’s awesome. She’s very supportive. I hope we have a lot more memories [together].’
Muniz’s Malcolm in the Middle co-star Bryan Cranston also sat down for the package to express his love and support.
‘I told him not to worry about what you remember and what you don’t remember,” said Cranston, 61. ‘They’re still your experiences. That will be my job. I will tell him, ‘Remember this? Remember that from Malcolm? What a life for you!’’
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