In 2021, as the landmark film Stand by Me celebrated its 35th anniversary, one of its stars came forward with his story.
Wil Wheaton, who starred in the film as Gordie, a young boy who searches for a suspected body with his best friends in 1950s Oregon, said in an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment he never wanted to do but his parents made him do. Wheaton said his mother, who was an actress, “brought me into it. My mom coached me to go into her agency and tell the pediatrician, ‘I want to do what mommy does.’ “
This was part of a larger pattern of abuse, including psychological abuse and manipulation, Wheaton said he was endured at the hands of his parents, from whom he is now estranged.
See also: William Hurt and the Silent Epidemic of Abuse
The topic came up because one of Wheaton’s co-stars on Stand by Me was Jerry O’Connell, a child actor friend who is now a co-host of the show The Talk. On his show, O’Connell publicly apologized to Wheaton for the first time for not realizing what Wheaton went through while the two were on set together – and for not doing anything about it.
“I want to apologize for not being there for you when you were younger,” O’Connell said. “You never know what someone’s going through when you’re with them. I don’t feel guilty, but I just want to say I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more.”
Wheaton was still a teenager when he starred in Stand By Me, Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation that would go on to become a classic. His co-star O’Connell was even younger, the youngest member of the cast.
In the film, 12-year-old Gordie and his three friends (played by River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and O’Connell) go in search of the body of a missing boy. This adventure leads them to meet leeches and an older gang of boys, but the shared experience also brings them every personal catharsis as they face hidden troubles. In Gordie’s case, he is grieving for a dead brother while believing that his father hates him. The film is considered a coming-of-age classic.
Wheaton accepted O’Connell’s apology, saying, “I appreciate that very much.” But Wheaton acknowledged the impossibility of the situation as they were both children at the time and powerless to change anything.
“You were 11… How could you know that?” said Wheaton. “Besides, anyone in the audience who has survived trauma knows we’re really, really, really good at covering up what we’re going through.”
On his website, Wheaton, who is also an author and later starred in shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, wrote of his father: “He made me a scapegoat in my broken family… I didn’t deserve it. No child deserves to be treated the way the man who was my father treated me. While he bullied me, humiliated me and made me feel small and unworthy, my mother supported and protected him.”
Wheaton said he channeled his own life to create his emotional and empathetic portrayal of Gordie. “Because Gordie’s experience mirrored my experience very closely. We’re both invisible in our homes… Because I was Gordie, I never realized I was Gordie until I was in my 40s.”
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Wheaton said it’s difficult for him to watch Stand by Me now: “I can’t ignore the incredible sadness in my eyes. And I can’t ignore the reality that it was that sadness, that isolation, that I felt gave me what Gordie needed to come alive and I think Rob Reiner saw that.”
But as Wheaton, who is now a father of two like O’Connell, wrote, “I’ve broken the cycle. I’m not the selfish bully I was unfortunate enough to be born to be.”
Watch the conversation on “The Talk” below via YouTube.
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