TV show Who’s the Boss? star Danny Pintauro recalled having the typical brother-sister relationship with actor Alyssa Milano and how she truly treated him like her younger brother.
But he also said as he aged on the series, producers became increasingly unsure where to take his storyline so they minimized his role when he was no longer the cute little kid.
The ‘Who’s the Boss?’ cast and Alyssa Milano were like family to Danny Pintauro
Pintauro described the Who’s the Boss? cast as though they were his family. “It couldn’t have been a better experience for all of those years. We really did come together as a family,” he recalled on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. “I mean we were doing Christmas gifts, I was getting Judith (Light), Mom, like ‘Merry Christmas Mom’ stuff, and I was getting Katherine (Helmond) like grandma stuff and you know, I loved being there.”
“Alyssa and I had like iffy moments, but that was really just cuz she was a teenager and I was the younger brother and she was just like, ‘Ah, get outta here!’ and slammed the door in my face,” he joked. “Nothing specifically, no malice to it. Just older sister, younger brother things. And you know, overall it was great.”
When did Danny’s role change on ‘Who’s the Boss?’
But something changed when Pintauro got older on the Who’s the Boss? “Near the final few seasons of the show, some more trauma was created for sure in that the producers didn’t know what to do with me. You know, here’s this sort of little kid who’s different and probably gay,” he shared.
“I can just imagine them trying to write scripts and being like, ‘Well we could have him have a girlfriend’ and then, they’d probably be like, ‘Yeah, no one’s gonna believe that.’ And of course, this is all hindsight, like I did not understand in the last few seasons why they had such a hard time finding good material for me.”
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“And it was always the same thing. ‘Guys, I’m a talented actor, I’ve been in some really dramatic stuff. Give me an episode …’ like there’s no reason why we can’t do a full episode about Jonathan in something interesting or serious or weird or whatever it might be,” he said. “And it just ended up being like, he sticks his hand in a mustard jar, ‘Oh no!’ you know, and two lines, three lines at the most.”
What made ‘Who’s the Boss?’ even worse?
“And then the final season they bring this little boy in because I obviously wasn’t providing them little boy energy anymore,” he said. “And that felt even worse because he had, you know, 10, 15 lines per episode, and here I am with like two. So it really sent me for a loop in a way. It just made me feel not wanted. I just didn’t feel like anybody wanted me there.”
“And what I realize now in hindsight after a lot of therapy and life passing is that it really just was, they didn’t know what to do with me,” he reflected. “And I can’t fault them for them at that time. There’s no way they could do anything other than silly storylines – and I’m not actually aware of my sexuality at that time. So it’s not like they could say, ‘Hey, would you like to do an episode about you figuring out?’ Like, could you even imagine that happening in 1980? You know?”
