Jerry O’Connell apologizes to Wil Wheaton for ‘not being there more’ for him while shooting ‘Stand by Me’
During Thursday’s episode of The Talk, old pals Jerry O’Connell and Wil Wheaton were able to touch base about something deeply personal for both of them.
O’Connell took time to acknowledge Wheaton’s confession last year during an interview with Yahoo Entertainment that a painful childhood riddled with "emotional abuse" helped fuel his performance as the troubled Gordie in the 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand by Me, which he starred in alongside O'Connell.
“I just wanted to say I heard you talked before about some of the struggles you were going through during Stand by Me, and while I was 11 at the time, that’s not an excuse,” O’Connell said. “I do want to apologize for not being there more for you when you were younger.”
“You never know what someone is going through when you’re with them," he added. "I don’t feel guilty but I just wanted to say I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more.”
Wheaton, who is estranged from his parents, told Yahoo Entertainment about the distress the emotional abuse he endured as a child.
“[It] put me in exactly the right place to play Gordie,” he said at the time. “Because Gordie’s experience very much reflected my experience. We’re both invisible in our homes. We both have a brother who is the golden child. We’re both the scapegoat in the family. So when I watch Stand by Me now, I cannot ignore the unbelievable sadness in my eyes. And I cannot ignore the reality that it was that sadness, that isolation that I think gave me what Gordie needed to come to life and I think [director] Rob Reiner saw that.”
Wheaton's parents did not respond to repeated requests for comment at the time.
Following O’Connell’s apology on The Talk, Wheaton was quick to comfort him with words of compassion.
“I deeply appreciate that,” he told O’Connell. “You were 11. How could you have possibly have known?” before directing his focus on the studio audience. “Everyone in the audience who is a trauma survivor knows this: We’re real, real, real good at covering up what we’re going through.”
O'Connell has spoken out about Wheaton's confession before. Last year, the actor and host touched on the revelation a week after Wheaton's interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
"I love Wil. He's a great friend of mine," he said on The Talk at the time. "We've obviously been friends for 35 years now. That film was 35 years ago. I had no idea he was feeling this when we were doing this film."
Watch Wheaton's original interview with Yahoo about 'Stand by Me':
He later tried to make Wheaton's story a teachable moment for viewers.
"If you sense anything is amiss, anything weird, it costs you nothing to go up to [someone] and say, 'Hey is everything OK? Is anything going on? Do you want someone to talk to?'" he said. "I just think even saying that I think reaches a hand out to someone."
When reflecting on the enduring legacy Stand by Me has had over the years, Wheaton couldn't help but acknowledge the genius of director Rob Reiner's casting.
“Corey was such a pain in the ass and I said to Rob, ‘Why did you cast him?’ And Rob said, ‘There was no other actor who was as angry as Corey was," he told Yahoo Entertainment last year. "And Teddy is filled with anger and rage.’ And I went, ‘Oh my God, that totally makes sense.’ River is smarter than all of us and wiser beyond his years than any of us are. And that’s exactly who Chris is. And Jerry is unbelievably funny, and really easy to get along with, and is guileless. ‘Oh my God, that’s Vern.’"
“I guess I want to be a writer so that makes me Gordie," he added. "I never realized until I was in my 40s that I was Gordie because I was Gordie.”
