‘Succession’ star revealed that he switched prop joints for the real thing while starring in an off-Broadway production when he was 17. Kieran Culkin has recalled how his co-stars and managers reacted to a “stupid” prank he pulled while appearing in a play when he was 17.
![[Kieran Culkin said he ‘knew better’ after getting up to mischief as a teenager]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/28/13/newFile.jpg)
The Succession star first rose to fame as a child star alongside his older brother, Macaulay, in Home Alone and its sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. By the time he was a teenager, Culkin was well acquainted with life on a set but was also prone to creating mischief.
![[Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in ‘A Real Pain’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/07/00/2024-CINE_79688.jpg)
One memorable example was the press night of an off-Broadway production of the James Lapine play The Moment When, which he appeared in with Mark Ruffalo and the late Phyllis Newman. Culkin apparently decided to spike a bag of prop spliffs with real marijuana, without telling his castmates, and later watched as Ruffalo took huge draws on what he believed to be a fake joint before passing it to his co-star.
By the interval, the entire cast was high. “Mark says, ‘I haven’t smoked pot in 10 years; the second half’s going to be so much fun.’ There was this other actor who had never smoked pot in her life. She goes, ‘Is this what being high is? This is lovely.’ And then Phyllis Newman comes in and goes, ‘I haven’t smoked pot since the 1960s. Thank you, darling.”.
