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Whatever Happened To Michael C. Maronna? – Looper

You might not know the name Michael C. Maronna, and you might not recognize his face as it looks today. But if you were a kid in the ’90s, you are definitely familiar with one or both of his signature roles during that decade. Most prominently, he played “Big Pete” Wrigley in the cult classic Nickelodeon series, “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” a show that remains one of the smartest and best-written kid shows ever made.

If you missed out on “Pete & Pete” — and unfortunately, it’s all but unavailable to watch legally these days if you did — then you will certainly know Maronna as Jeff McCallister, one of the many kids who were inexplicably mean to poor Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in the first two “Home Alone” movies. The one who called Kevin a disease and had no sympathy for Kevin’s inexperience in packing his own bag, to be exact. 

Maronna initially seemed to be on the way to transitioning into the adult phase of his career when he began appearing in college student and 20-something-aged roles in the late-’90s and into the 2000s, but he largely stepped away from acting after that. So what has the actor been up to these last 20-odd years? Actually, quite a bit, and he’s remained directly adjacent to show business this entire time — only in a way that might surprise you. 

He continued acting into the 2000s

Warner Bros. Television

As previously mentioned, Maronna didn’t just appear in “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” and two “Home Alone” movies. He not only co-starred in the 2002 coming-of-age comedy, “Slackers,” as well — which we’ll dig into more in a bit — but he had a number of film and television appearances throughout the ’90s and the 2000s. He appeared in a Season 8 episode of “Law & Order” in 1997 as a murder suspect with the alias, Tagger, his first gig following his two breakthrough roles. After “Slackers,” Maronna starred as a character known only as Bagel Guy in the Josh Hartnett and Shannyn Sossamon rom-com, “40 Days and 40 Nights,” released later that same year. 

In 2003, Maronna went indie when he played a role in the Sundance award-winning coming-of-age film, “What Alice Found.” He then went back to television for a Season 3 episode of “Gilmore Girls” called “Here Comes the Son” before featuring in a few more lesser-known films. His most recent completed screen credits include the 2010 short film, “On Edge,” and a 2013 short created for the 20th anniversary of “Pete & Pete.” 

The Slackers cast was a who’s who of young Hollywood at the time

Sony Pictures Releasing

It would seem that Hollywood had high hopes for Maronna as he ventured back out into films in the new millennium. As proof, just look at his co-stars for 2002’s “Slackers” — Jason Segel, Jason Schwartzman, Jamie King, Devon Sawa, and Laura Prepon, a pretty definitive snapshot of the next big things of the time. Considering where most of them would be with their careers just a few years after this, Maronna was definitely being positioned as a future A-lister by virtue of being part of this retrospectively star-studded cast.

The coming-of-age college comedy didn’t end up being a huge hit at the box office nor did it win over critics, but that clearly didn’t do anything to stop the career ascent of any of its cast members. As for Maronna, it would be one of two major studio comedies he did that year — “40 Days and 40 Nights” being the other — and he apparently didn’t find what he was looking for in either experience, as he would go in a very different direction with the remainder of that stretch of his career. Still, it had to at least have been a fun ride to flirt with that level of Hollywood success as a 25-year-old actor, if only for a little while. 

He played the character Stewart in a series of popular commercials

Ameritrade/YouTube

In the time between his most high-profile acting gigs, Maronna spent a year or so best known for the character of Stewart in a series of commercials for the stock-buying website, Ameritrade. Steward was depicted as a quirky, energetic young employee working in an unspecified office who seemed to take a special interest in helping his older colleagues figure out how Ameritrade works. After all, this was 1999, when the perception was that the internet was this big, scary, complicated place that middle-aged adults couldn’t possibly navigate without the help of someone younger.

Maronna would later reprise the character for a video that was created for and shown during the 2000 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with outgoing president Bill Clinton playing himself and being the one who needed the expertise of the young internet wiz. That certainly had to be a pretty cool moment for the actor.

Since 1997, he’s been doing electrical work for film and television productions

20th Century Fox

Remember that showbiz-adjacent career we alluded to in the beginning? Well, if you go to Maronna’s IMDb page, you’ll see that his credits include “Sex and the City,” “Ugly Betty,” “Tower Heist,” “Men in Black 3,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Jessica Jones,” “Blue Bloods,” “NYPD Blue,” “The Good Fight,” “Your Place or Mine,” and more. But why didn’t we mention any of those when discussing his acting career? That’s because Maronna worked in the electrical department of those films and TV shows plus literally dozens more.

As Maronna explained in an interview with Rewind It Magazine, he had become curious about the technical aspects of producing a television show while doing “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” and was constantly bugging the crew with questions about the lighting and electrical work in particular. “A couple of seasons later, I just kept asking questions of the gaffer and eventually he offered me a job after the show ended,” Maronna said, which led to his first gig as an electrician for the 1997 movie, “Six Ways to Sunday.” Soon, Maronna was doing electrician and gaffer work on films and television shows full-time, a career that he maintains to this day. 

He studied documentary filmmaking in college

Miramax

As he began to become more interested in working behind the scenes, Maronna naturally gravitated toward filmmaking as well. He had already spent most of his life on sets, and was more than familiar with the process of making both movies and television shows, making him a great candidate for directing. As such, when he went to college, Maronna added documentary filmmaking to the list of things he studied in film school in New York.

It was something he discussed with host Will Carey on the “Between Awesome and Disaster” podcast in 2022. Though he revealed on the podcast that he made several documentaries as student projects plus one for himself after he finished school, none have ever been made publicly available and only exist on the original film they were shot on. While Maronna does seem to maintain an interest in documentary filmmaking and doesn’t outright rule out the possibility of returning to it, he currently has nothing in the works in that medium, at least not on a commercial level.

After doing Broadway as a child, he returned to live theater in 2005

Twitter @michaelcmaronna

During his appearance on the “Between Awesome and Disaster” podcast, Maronna detailed his childhood doing live theater in which he appeared in multiple Broadway productions. It was something he enjoyed at the time — and was in his blood, as it were, as he has several theater actors in his family — but once he started landing film and television roles he left the stage behind and never looked back. Given that he was 13 years old when he starred in “Home Alone,” his first screen credit, that’s a lot of live theater he managed to pack in at a very young age, including one production that even toured the country. 

That is, until 2005 when Maronna was cast in a New York City production of “Peace Now.” Set during the Vietnam War and the protests that surrounded it, Maronna played a smaller role, but it was still significant in that it marked his first stage role in about 15 years. The production only ran for the summer, and Maronna hasn’t returned to the theater since, though it’s not known whether it was a one-off thing or if Broadway is something he might consider revisiting again at some point if the right project presented itself. 

He has a podcast with his Pete & Pete co-star Danny Tamberelli

Bobby Bank/Getty Images

A lot of child actors who are most commonly associated with a role they played when they were young come to resent that association and don’t want to talk about or otherwise address it anymore. That said, not all of them are like that, and podcasting seems to be an appealing venue for people to revisit their famous childhood roles. There are a growing number of podcasts that feature the now-adult casts of shows like “Boy Meets World,” “One Tree Hill,” and “The O.C.” getting together to rewatch their shows or at least just discuss what it was like making them.

While there is a podcast called “Big Orange Couch” that looks at all the Nickelodeon shows of the ’90s and had an episode about “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” Maronna and his “Pete & Pete” co-star, Danny Tamberelli (“Little Pete”), also have their own separate podcast called “The Adventures of Danny & Mike.” Launched in 2013 as a monthly podcast and eventually moving to weekly(ish) episodes, the still-running show features the titular actors plus various guest stars as they discuss their iconic series, their lives and careers then and now, and whatever else they feel like talking about. 

He frequently shows up for conventions and reunions

Rick Kern/Getty Images

As part of “The Adventures of Danny & Mike” podcast, the duo sometimes takes their show on the road for live recordings in front of an audience. In addition to doing the standard version of the show for the crowd, the shows can include anything from videos, musical performances, and other added elements that make it feel more like a concert than just a basic live taping of a podcast. It’s one thing to do a podcast, but it’s another to be willing to get out on the road and do a live tour in front of audiences, and it’s great that Maronna is down for that.

In addition, Maronna has long been a fixture at Nickelodeon and “Adventures of Pete & Pete” reunion shows, as well as convention panels about both. He definitely doesn’t mind talking or taking questions about his career, with “Pete & Pete” being the most common topic of discussion. Maronna is clearly proud of the show and recalls it fondly, and he appreciates how many fans it still has and loves to show up for them. 

He is married and has a son

Twitter @michaelcmaronna

Though Maronna is somewhat private about his life away from showbusiness, with only fairly vague details made publicly available about his home life — so much so that various celebrity information websites get details completely wrong about his personal life — he has been willing to share a few things over the years in interviews and on social media. 

Though he has never said the name of his son or his wife, Maronna himself has confirmed that he is in fact married and has a child. He rarely talks about his wife but has mentioned his son in a few interviews, and has shared pictures with him on social media. In an interview with Trainwreck’d Society, Maronna cited watching his son enjoy a train ride as the last thing to make him smile, accompanied by a picture of the two of them. It seems Maronna is content to mostly keep that part of his life for himself other than to confirm that he is happy, which should be all that anyone needs to know anyway. 

He is a very active and outspoken Twitter user

Seltzer Kings Podcast Network

Speaking of social media, Maronna doesn’t appear to have a publicly-known Instagram but he definitely has a Twitter account – and he’s on it pretty regularly. His usage of the platform is varied and includes posts about his career, anecdotes about fan interactions, pictures of his travels, the occasional photo of his son, and just random musings on life in general.

It’s also worth noting that, while Maronna tends to cultivate a pretty uncontroversial celebrity persona otherwise, he is extremely outspoken on Twitter and doesn’t shy away from making his opinions on various topics known — from his thoughts on politics and social issues to sharing support for various causes, most recently making it known that he is on the side of the members of the Writers Guild of America in their strike for better wages. In addition to his own posts, he also isn’t afraid to reply to other people and call them out when he feels it’s needed — and isn’t shy about showing the receipts when he does so. 

He returned to acting for the upcoming thriller from the director of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Utopia

While Maronna seemed to have left acting behind over a decade ago, he hasn’t retired from it completely. In fact, filming has already wrapped on his comeback project, though there currently is no release date set for “I Saw the TV Glow.” The latest thriller from A24, the company who has more or less owned that genre in recent years, “I Saw the TV Glow” is written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, who previously made the unnerving “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” (2021). 

The movie looks to be a star-studded affair, including a few people who are most commonly associated with the ’90s. In addition to Maronna, the movie’s cast includes Danny Tamberelli, Amber Benson (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), and Fred Durst, frontman of the U.S. band, Limp Bizkit. Other announced members of the cast, which includes both actors and musicians, are Justice Smith (“Detective Pikachu”), Brigette Lundy-Paine (“Bill and Ted Face the Music”), Danielle Deadwyler (“The Harder They Fall”), and musician Phoebe Bridgers. It’s also being co-produced by Emma Stone’s Fruit Tree Productions, which had previously put out the 2023 comedy, “When You Finish Saving the World.” Little is known about the plot, but we look forward to a trailer and hope we get to see Maronna in it.