Andrew McCarthy first walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain 25 years ago, and the experience changed his life. He’s now taken the same 500-mile trip with his son, actor Sam McCarthy, which he chronicles in his new book that’s out now, Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain. The journey was illuminating for both father and son. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Andrew about what he learned about his son, if he’d do the same walk a third time, and the latest on his Brat Pack documentary.
“I had wanted to do it again. I kind of always wanted to do it again. And I didn’t as time slipped away. I had actually gotten to the point where I thought I never would, so when it sort of presented itself with Sam, I just leapt at it,” Andrew said.
Through their long journey, Andrew and Sam had deep, emotional conversations about everything from breakups to divorce. The actor and director revealed how his relationship with his son evolved over the course of the walk.
“I think it gave us a new baseline of intimacy to operate from,” he said. “One of my goals was to sort of transform it from being parent-child, which was a relationship my son no longer needed or wanted to be told what to do every five minutes and scolded via parent. That wasn’t appropriate anymore, so to sort of give it a new baseline of adults communicating to each other and instead of giving advice or instruction to him, I advocate for him, to him, in a certain way, which is something you can take it or leave it as opposed to being told what to do and stuff. I think it just sort of helped us trust the soundness of our relationship in a deeper way.”
When Andrew first took the walk solo 25 years ago, he discovered “how much fear had dominated my life in a way that I had been unaware that it even existed until I had this kind of white light experience in the middle of a field of wheat halfway across Spain the first time. That changed my life, that instant of realizing that. I broke down into this sobbing mess all alone under the noon scorching sun, and I didn’t even know why I was sobbing. And then as I kind of calmed down, I just realized how much fear had dominated me, and I didn’t even know that was an issue in my life. That changed my place in the world very much, and it led me to a whole other career as a travel writer because I started traveling the world because of that moment.”
This second trip evoked new realizations for the father of three. “I had certain anxieties about parenting that I think I really had to look at, and the notion of fearing losing my relationship with my son as he became an adult because mine had ended with my own father. So I didn’t know, where do we go? How do we do this? I had certain anxieties about that maybe I didn’t need, but certainly the walk helped clarify. It was really neat watch to support someone else walking into themselves, which is what happened with Sam,” Andrew told HollywoodLife.
In addition to his acting and directing work, Andrew has also become a revered travel writer. When he embarked on this walk across Spain, he was taking notes but hadn’t planned an entire book. However, he revealed the moment that he knew he had to chronicle this trek with his son.
“You get to Santiago, which is 500 miles across in the western part of Spain, and that’s where the pilgrimage ends. And then there’s another 50 miles to the sea to a place called Finisterre that many walkers feel the pull to go do that, and I certainly did not. I thought, I’m making it to Santiago if I make it and that’s enough. I’m going to sit my tired body down. And Sam said, ‘I’m going to go on and go to the sea.’ That to me was the low-hanging fruit of that metaphor was too much to resist, the children going beyond parents, which is, of course, our goals as parents, right? You just want them to go to college, be the first to go to medical school, whatever. That he was going beyond me to the sea I found very moving and I was thrilled for him. When Sam decided to do that at that instant, that’s when I knew I have a book,” he said.
As for whether or not he would take the same 500-mile trip across Spain for a third time, Andrew isn’t ruling it out. “Well, had you talked to me near the end of the walk, the answer would have been no f***ing way. But you know? Sure. I would in a heartbeat,” the actor admitted. “Both times it was a profound experience for me when I was a much younger guy, and then this time. I would love to do it again if one of my other kids wanted to do, which I doubt they would. My daughter said, ‘Maybe we can just go to Paris.’ But I think I got one more in me.”
He added, “What happened this time and the first time is it takes a while to really sift through and to digest. It’s a real bittersweet feeling of arriving. It’s this great feeling of satisfaction, and you’re proud of yourself and happy and joyous. There’s also a real melancholy feeling that, wow, it’s over, and this time with my son in this case will never come again. We may do it again older together. Maybe. Maybe not. But that moment of when he’s transitioning into adulthood, and we could share that moment… that’ll never come again. There was something really bittersweet about that. Those kinds of things should be honored for a little while before one goes and does them again.”
On top of publishing Walking With Sam, the St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty In Pink alum is also working on a Brat Pack documentary, which he was inspired to take on after publishing his bestselling memoir, Brat. He recently reunited with his former co-star Rob Lowe to discuss that life-changing period of their lives.
“I realized I had never talked to any of the other guys about it, and I knew that it was massive for them as well. So I went and said I’d make a documentary. I called up people and just went out and saw them and talked to him and said, ‘Look, this is a big deal to me. This is what happened to me. What happened to you?’ It was great to reconnect with all these people after sometimes 30 years of not seeing Rob Lowe or Emilio [Estevez] or Ally Sheedy or something. It was wonderful because I had so much affection for them and they toward me and consequently we had toward our own youth again in a way that I never had considered before. When we were young, we were all kind of very competitive and trying to get the next job and all this kind of stuff, and you don’t know anything. You’re a kid. So to find what remained was just this affection for each other and for that time in our lives was really lovely. We’re just putting the finishing touches on that, and it should hopefully come out in the fall.”