My friend Danny delivered the single greatest stage performance I ever witnessed in person. During a play in college, a few of us in the crew replaced his character’s delicious milk chocolate with bitter baker’s chocolate. We thought it would be funny to see him react on stage to the surprise. But Danny was f***ing NAILS. He didn’t respond at all (not until he spit it all out backstage). No one in the audience knew anything was amiss. Dumb, yes, but it turns out we had nothing on Kieran Culkin. Because instead of chocolate, Culkin has admitted he’s the actor who once got Mark Ruffalo high during a play by replacing the Avenger’s prop joint with a real one.
Way back in 2012 Mark Ruffalo said a “naughty young actor” once got him and some other performers high on stage. Now the mystery of the guilty prop-swapping party has come forward. Culkin has revealed to The Guardian (in a confession we first heard about at Deadline) he did it. Calling himself “17 and stupid,” he thought it would be funny to slip a real joint into the show without anyone knowing.
The incident came during a 2000 off-Broadway production of James Lapine‘s The Moment When. That’s also when Culkin first owned up. Realizing exactly what he’d done, he apologized at intermission. But while the stage manager wasn’t happy, Ruffalo and his co-stars didn’t mind. They actually enjoyed it. Ruffalo said he felt like he was “on fire” that night. He also said he got the best reviews of his life for that performance. Meanwhile Culkin claims the other actors who also took big overly dramatic hits told him they enjoyed the feeling, too.
Getting professional actors high during a production in New York City is a far cry from feeding your friend baker’s chocolate during a college play. I get that. And yet, they’re actually the same. (Danny might have even had it worse since that awful taste was immediate!) So kudos to both my friend and to Mark Ruffalo for being tremendous actors who conquered the stupidity of young kids.