Two former child stars from “The Little Rascals” opened up about financial insecurity, following their breakout roles.
Blake Collins and Jordan Warkol both starred in the 1994 film and have since started a podcast detailing their lives since the blockbuster film and the realities of success at such a young age.
Collins played Woim, the sidekick of Butch the bully, in the film when he was just 7 years old. Beyond his “Little Rascals” fame, he also starred in 150 national commercials in the ’90s. By the time he was 15 and in high school, though, he ended up working at McDonald’s.
“I worked at McDonald’s in high school,” he said in an interview with People published Friday, adding that people recognized him from the film “all the time.”
“All my friends worked there in high school. It was fun, but it’s very awkward to be working a cash register at McDonald’s, you’re 15 years old, someone going like, ‘Can I get a number one please? Wait, I know you from somewhere. Were you in ‘The Little Rascals’?‘” he explained. “And I’m like, ‘Yes.’ And they’re like, ‘Now you work at McDonald’s?’”
Collins and his co-star Warkol, who starred as Froggy in the film, started a podcast together this year in which they unpack the realities of child stardom and interview other former child stars.
One of the biggest takeaways from their conversation is that many former child actors “got nothing” from their years working because their money was often mismanaged.
“Unfortunately, which is a common story with a lot of child actors, the money doesn’t get always handled very well,” he said. “[We hear], ‘My parents handled it very bad, or stole it, just straight up stole it.’ In some cases … and then there’s the great stories where like, ‘Oh yeah, I got every dime.’”
Collins recalled leaving his acting career before high school because he wanted a “normal” relationship with his mother. He described their dynamic growing up as a “manager/employee relationship.”
Now at 41, he works behind the scenes doing camerawork on sets. Warkol has left the entertainment industry almost completely and works in business development at OTTera, a global content distribution marketplace that connects media publishers with major platforms like Roku and Samsung TV Plus.
