Though Emilio Estevez was often considered the “unofficial president” of the Brat Pack in the ‘80s, he did everything he could to avoid being associated with the group of young actors — including turning down potentially lucrative film roles. He explained in the new BRATS documentary that it felt like the members were each other’s “kryptonite.”
“I get the most upset about it because I had already seen a different path for myself, and I felt derailed. I didn’t do a movie because of it,” Emilio, 62, told fellow Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy in the doc, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7 and will begin streaming on Hulu on Thursday, June 13, of the negative impact the Brat Pack name had on his career. “This was Young Men With Unlimited Capital, which was one of the best scripts I had read in a long time.”
Andrew, 61, admitted to Emilio that he was also asked to do Young Men With Unlimited Capital, but he learned that The Mighty Ducks actor “didn’t want” him to participate in the film, which hurt Andrew’s feelings. Emilio reassured him that it wasn’t a direct issue with Andrew — it was the Brat Pack as a whole.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us. Do you know what I mean? I just didn’t want to do any movies. If it were Judd, I would have said the same thing,” he explained. “To be seen again in another film would ultimately and could potentially have a negative impact. Working together just almost felt like we were kryptonite to each other.”
The Breakfast Club star sat down with the Weekend at Bernie’s actor in the documentary to discuss the fallout of David Blum’s 1985 New York Magazine cover story that coined the term for a group of successful film stars in their early 20s. Along with Emilio and Andrew, the Brat Pack consisted of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire alums Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy.
After the article came out, the actors were often viewed as partiers and were not taken seriously in the film industry. Many of them went on to experience struggles with drug and alcohol addiction in the late ‘80s as a result.
Though he agreed to discuss the Brat Pack with Andrew after years of avoiding the subject, Emilio said he is “not interested in revisiting” the past in depth. “I think if you’re too busy looking in your rear-view mirror, looking at what’s behind you, you’re going to stumble trying to move forward,” he continued.
When asked if he wished the Brat Pack name never existed, Emilio said, “That’s a difficult question to answer because you could only know the known. Was it something we benefited from? Maybe. But in the long run, I think we did not. I think there was more damage done by it than good.”
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