For nine seasons of The Middle, Charlie McDermott played lazy, football-loving eldest son Axl of the Orson, Indiana-based Heck family. But where is he today? McDermott has kept an exceptionally low profile since the show’s end in 2018, with only a few subsequent roles to his name and sporadic activity on social media. Keep reading to learn what he’s been doing, and to see McDermott now, at age 32.
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He acted alongside Mark Wahlberg.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagicFollowing The Middle going off the air, McDermott’s next role was in the 2018 Mark Wahlberg film Instant Family, in which he played a coworker of Wahlberg’s character, a man overwhelmed after taking in three foster children at once.
After that, the former sitcom star went on to act in three episodes of the Netflix drama Unbelievable, and most recently, had a supporting role in the 2019 horror movie Countdown, about a smartphone app that can accurately predict when you’re going to die.
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He almost had his own series.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesMcDermott’s departure from The Middle might have come before the last season if things had gone differently. In 2015, it was announced that McDermott would star in a retooled pilot for the Greg Garcia series Super Clyde—taking on a role inhabited by Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint in an earlier version—playing a meek fast food worker-turned-superhero. The move would have made it difficult for McDermott to star in the then-unconfirmed seventh season of The Middle, with Deadline speculating he might move down to a recurring character. The pilot was not picked up, however, leaving McDermott free to appear in the series’ subsequent three seasons.
He got married.
Michael Tullberg/Getty ImagesMcDermott was previously involved with Everybody Hates Chris and American Horror Story actor Shelby Young, but was never married to Shortland Street actor Beth Allen, as some outlets have reported—that’s a different Charlie McDermott. The Middle star married British photographer Sara Rejaie in 2017. The two reside in Los Angeles and are frequent creative partners, having written and directed a short film and collaborated on and appeared in self-produced music videos together.
He spent the pandemic releasing music.
McDermott is a longtime musician who “plays guitar all the time,” according to former co-star Atticus Schaffer. (The actor who played youngest Heck child Brick was the recipient of one of McDermott’s hand-me-down guitars, per their 2017 The Real appearance alongside on-screen sister Eden Sher.) In 2020, McDermott began releasing music videos for his original songs, and in November of that year, put out an eight-track digital album of dreamy, ambient guitar tunes entitled some things just fall out of your hands.
He directed a short film.
In 2012, McDermott made his first foray into directing with ImagiGARY, a film about a college freshman and his imaginary friend, which he wrote, funded and starred in. After the film was released in 2015, he followed it up by directing the episode “Confirmation” during The Middle’s final season.
“I’ve been shadowing on set pretty much since the show began, even on all the projects I worked on prior to The Middle,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “So it’s something I prepared for a long, long time. So when the time finally came, I felt like I had a good grasp on it.”
After leaving the show, McDermott continued to direct, releasing the short Layla, a moody piece about a young girl stalked by her vampire mother (played by co-director Rejaie, whose brother Darius is also listed as composer on the film), in 2018.
