McCarthy spoke to PEOPLE ahead of the release of his new book, 'Who Needs Friends'
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NEED TO KNOW
- Andrew McCarthy is recounting the now-iconic dance performed by Jon Cryer in the 1986 film Pretty in Pink
- Cryer’s dance (performed in character as “Duckie”) saw him, lip-syncing and dancing to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” in a record store
- As McCarthy recalls, it first seemed embarrassing but later, liberating
Andrew McCarthy is recounting the moment he watched Jon Cryer first perform the now-iconic dance to Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness" in the 1986 film Pretty in Pink.
Four decades after it hit theaters, McCarthy, 63, spoke to PEOPLE about the film and his forthcoming book, Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America.
"I remember watching John Cryer do that dance scene," he mused. "And I remember watching him do the beginning of it. I was like, 'Wow, this is really embarrassing for him.'"
McCarthy continues: "And then I kept watching and I went, 'Wow, this is really great of him,' you know,?' So it was an interesting evolution — and I don't know if it was me, that I gave it up or whether he relaxed in the infinitesimal degree — but Jon always jumped right in."
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"So it's probably me getting over myself and kind of realizing good for him to sort of make himself open like that, you know," McCarthy added.
The Brat Pack member's book Who Needs Friends charts his exploration of male friendship, starting with those in his own life. Throughout the course of the book, he spends some ten thousand miles behind the wheel, navigating through Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the Chihuahuan Desert, and the Rocky Mountains to reconnect with his friends.
His friendship with Cryer was the subject of headlines in the 1980s, as Pretty in Pink the source of some reported clashes between the two, who played rivals in the film.
The two ultimately mended their rift in 2012 while backstage at The View. “Molly and I were work friends,” Cryer told PEOPLE in 2024. “Andrew and I couldn’t even manage that. I had no idea he was already dealing with an alcohol addiction. At the time, I perceived him as kind of haughty and remote, but had I known he was working so hard just to keep it together, I might have been more understanding.”
McCarthy's own look at friendship in his new book came as the result of his son Sam asking him, “You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?”
"When my son did ask me that, he just sort of put me on the spot," McCarthy tells PEOPLE. "And I kind of had this sort of drop in my stomach and kind of went, 'Huh. Yea, good point, Sam.'"
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Friendships, McCarthy says, are notoriously difficult for men to sustain.
"We're really bad at this kind of thing and communicating, or letting know people that they're important to us, you know what I mean?" he says. "I just happen to have gotten to a certain age where I kind of went, 'You know what, this is important to me and I need to do something about it.'"
He continues: "As I was driving, I sort of felt like I was earning my friendships back in a certain way."
"It just started to become something really valuable to me and I sort of started to feel like there was a safety net under me again that I didn't really feel in life since I'd [gotten older]. You know … life happens, you have kids, you have family and work," he adds. "I was aware of feeling quite alone — you know, I have a family so I'm never lonely in that regard, but I felt separate and alone in certain ways. So who should I connect with but the people that I trusted most, you know, outside of my family?"
Who Needs Friends will be released on March 24, 2026.
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