Anthony Michael Hall skyrocketed to fame in the 1980s playing the quintessential teenage nerd in John Hughes classics like Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. Now, more than 40 years after those iconic movies hit the big screen, the esteemed actor has found himself back in the classroom.

Nation’s Dumbest is FOX’s newest celebrity game show, and it brings together a motley crew of A-listers, from actors like Hall to reality stars like JoJo Siwa to politicians like Andrew Yang. In the show, the 12 high-profile contestants are put through various challenges and quizzes, with the most successful competitor eliminated each week until one celebrity is ultimately crowned the “Nation’s Dumbest.”

With the show largely taking place in a high school classroom, it was not lost on Hall that it was quite the full-circle moment for him. “In my career, I never leave high school,” he joked when he stopped by DECIDER’s studio earlier this week. “I’m pushing 60. I’m still dealing with high school.”

In fact, there were even times during filming when Hall once again felt like a teenager sitting in Saturday detention with people he probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with in his everyday life.

“There is a parallel with this show because I had such a good time with all these people and there were 12 of us,” he said. “But there were moments in my head where I was like, ‘Are we going to be friends on Monday? Is this going to work out?’ Because I really wanted to get together.”

When DECIDER caught up with the actor, he teased more about his trajectory on Nation’s Dumbest, what it was like to reunite with Tim Burton on Wednesday for the first time since Edward Scissorhands (1990), and which of his movies he’s shown his 3-year-old son. Check out the full interview below.

DECIDER: I am so excited to have you back here – this time, to talk about Nation’s Dumbest! How was this show pitched to you and what made you say yes?

ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL: First of all, you hear that title, I was like, “Wait a minute, I’m a serious actor.” I had to throw all that out the window. Honestly, it was a great lesson in staying open to new possibilities. Never say never. I’m also one of those husbands that’s home talking a lot of smack about reality shows. Meanwhile, my wife is like, “Sit down, let’s watch Love is Blind.” I’m like, “Really, honey? There’s a UFC fight I want to watch on YouTube.” So, when you get married, you have to have at least two TVs, right? So it was really fun. I just embraced it, Sam. Honestly, it took me by complete surprise. I was really grateful. I had heard that this show was co-produced by FOX and BBC. It had been a hit, I guess, in Norway and a bunch of other countries, so it was like a proven model. It was just so much fun.

We went up to Toronto to shoot. I took my family with me. FOX and everybody was so kind. They just took great care of us. We shot this in 12 days. It was incredible. So we have 12 weeks of a show, and each day was a dedicated episode. We had like four challenges, I think, each day. It was incredible, and it was tough, I’m telling you. It wasn’t just trivia. It was brain games, word games. There was science and math involved, which is where I tap out. I’m the worst. I barely got a GED in my life, so I was just like, “Oh, my God, what am I doing here?” But honestly, it was also great listening and not judging a book by its cover and just really enjoying the people.

We all got along really well, from some of the Gen Z, like JoJo Siwa and Chase, all the way up to the OGs like me and Dr. Drew and Ice-T. It’s so funny, every time I watch the commercials for it, I’m like, “Is that me? Oh no, that’s Dr.Drew, he’s in better shape than me. I don’t look so good here.” But it’s really funny, it was just such a great experience and I loved it. I heard people like Steve-O and Ice-T were involved and I was like, “I’m there.” So it was really a great, great experience. 

Do you feel like actors get a bad rap when it comes to education and intelligence?

I’m upfront about it. I got a GED in 10th grade so I could do SNL across the street. I’ll be honest with you. But I really wasn’t a good student despite the image of my early characters as the nerd and the booksmart one. I was a pretty good student. I was good in English and history maybe, but everything else? Not at all.

I imagine there’s a lot more pressure in the moment. 

There was! To be very honest, everybody was like, “I want to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be the last man standing here or the last woman standing.” But it was really all good fun. And again, a credit to FOX and BBC, they produced this so well, it was so well thought out and it was a blast for all of us. But the other thing you notice when you get to a reality show set, there were literally like 35 or 40 camera guys. I was like, “What the hell is going on?” We got the GoPros on the ceiling and all this other stuff. So it did feel like Big Brother to an extent where I was like, “Wait a minute, can I ever get off this set?” I just kind of felt stupid because I didn’t have a script, I didn’t have a role, nothing to prepare. But that was also a great lesson. Just go up there and be yourself, have some fun – that’s what I tried to do – and just lean into it. I started goofing a lot, kind of ad-libbing a lot and having fun with it because all of us felt like idiots. I’m in show business. I’m already one of the nation’s dumbest, thank you very much. So it was really great. Then you have to constantly do these interviews in between, so we’d be in the high school hallway set in between each game, talking about how we all felt stupid or whatever. But we just had a great time with it. It was really cool. And everyone got along beautifully. It’s really fun. 

This show really has a packed cast. You, JoJo Siwa, Carmen Electra, Andrew Yang, Steve-O, Hilaria Baldwin. Who did you bond with the most?

I honestly was so impressed by everyone in different ways, like JoJo Siwa. She’s a young lady that I had heard of for years. She basically grew up on reality shows. I didn’t know any of this. I did watch Dance Moms. I’m a little late to the scene. But she was incredible. What a great spirit she has. She’s such a competitor, such a fire. Meanwhile, between games, we’re hanging out a lot and she’s flipping houses in Palm Springs. I’m like, “JoJo’s a rock star!” But she’s really competitive [and a] really fun person. She’s awesome. Chase was really a lot of fun. He’s a very bright young guy. He was like a young rock star. I don’t know about him. He’s recorded with Travis Barker and all these people, so he’s really cool. But I loved hanging out with Ice-T. He was great. He had some great stories. Steve-O, I’ve always been a fan of. I love the Jackass series and all that. Dr. Drew, I was on Loveline years ago with him and my wife was actually from Slovakia originally. She learned English watching old Baywatch episodes and watching Loveline in Europe. So, she has a special love for Dr. Drew. Every night we’d be back at the hotel at the Shangri-La in Toronto hanging out. We’d all share meals. It was honestly such a great experience. It was a great reminder of a lot of things. Don’t judge, stay open to surprises and just have a good attitude. It was a lesson in all that for me. 

Speaking of JoJo, she has really become a staple in reality game shows. She was great on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. 

I heard, I heard … Steve-O of all people, Steve-O bought a piece of land in Tennessee, he lives outside of Nashville, and he left because he had to go to clown school. He’s going to clown school in Nashville! I’m like, “Damn right Steve-O’s going clown school.” It was so cool. Carmen Electra was great, Elle King was incredible, everybody was so cool. There was such a wide variety of people, different demos and everything.

There was a little bit of a Breakfast Club Easter egg in Episode 2 with the elephant lamp.

That’s right, because in my career, I never leave high school. I’m pushing 60. I’m still dealing with high school. 

Did that surprise you when you saw that? 

Well, they told me about that ahead of time, that they kind of worked that in. I guess my character, yeah, he’s in detention in The Breakfast Club in 1984 because he didn’t make the elephant lamp. So they did that. They kind of harkened back to that, which I thought was kind of funny. But it was cool. Everybody was really great. Honestly, very encouraging and supportive and every day we didn’t know what to expect. It was like four new games every day and challenges and it was really a lot of fun. 

Will we see you on future game shows or reality shows?

It’s so funny. My representatives asked me the same question, as did the producers. I was like, “Let’s see how this one goes first.” You know what I mean? If people enjoy this, I mean, I’m open to it. But it was also a great lesson in that, never say never. You never know. I just really had a lot of fun with the people and just kind of goofing off and just being myself. Usually, I have to have a script and be prepared. I had nothing to prepare here. That was fun, but it was kind of awkward in a funny way.

When we last saw you, you were getting ready to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Breakfast Club, and the full cast was going to reunite for the first time ever since filming the movie. What was that reunion like?

It’s funny because there is a parallel with this show because I had such a good time with all these people and there were 12 of us. But there were moments in my head where I was like, “Are we going to be friends on Monday? Is this going to work out?” Because I really wanted to get together. But we’ve honestly kept the group text going and people are reconnecting and we all hope to stay in touch. I’m going to be in Nashville in the fall, so I think I’ll see Steve-O and Elle King there. They live there. It was really cool. But it’s really funny about my career because of these John Hughes films that obviously live in people’s hearts and I’m so grateful for them. It was really funny that here I am stuck in high school again in Toronto. I’m like, “What the hell am I doing?” It was a great experience, it really was. 

Last year, you also got to reunite with Tim Burton for a cameo in Wednesday. What was that experience like? 

Incredible. When I got to Dublin to shoot it – I’m Irish and Italian, my ethnicity – and I was so excited to be working for him again. We shot in Dublin, I took my wife and my son. We were already in Europe visiting my mother-in-law. We just went right to Dublin to shoot this and it was so cool. When I got to the production office, the first question I asked was like, “Where’s Tim?” They’re like, “Tim’s in the South of France editing.” I’m like, “Of course, if I’m Tim Burton, I’d be in the South of France editing too.” But I was directed by a gentleman named Pablo Cabezas, and I did one episode, but we were there for like six weeks. So it became a great opportunity to take my family all across Ireland and we took all these great weekend trips and it was just a great experience. But I sent Tim an email and I said, “Tim, thank you for the opportunity. I’m really honored to be working with you again.” And I tagged my email with, “You didn’t have to wait 34 years to hire me again, dude.” It was awesome. It was really a real pleasure to be a part of his world. Because I think Tim Burton stands alone honestly, like other than Walt Disney, he’s such a visionary. He has such a signature look, even though his movies can be very different. But he’s a great artist and I was happy to join that cast for a little bit. 

I know your son is still young, but do you have an idea of what movies you’ll show him first and when?

It’s so funny you said that because I happened to buy him a Batman action figure a couple months back. And it just dawned on me naturally, I was just watching him after school a couple weeks ago and I’m like, “Michael, do you know that Daddy knows Batman?” He’s like, “You know Batman?” I was like, “Yeah, I did a movie with him. I know Batman. I worked with him.” He’s like, “You did?” So I put on The Dark Knight. He got through about four minutes of it and he was like, “Can we put on Minions?” He got bored quick. But it’s so cute because it became a running gag. He comes home from school and he’ll go, “Can we watch The Dark Knight?” He knows the title now. And it’s like my heart just comes out of my body. He’s beautiful. He’s my everything. My wife and I just adore him. 

You have some other things coming out too. You’re going to be in Halloween Store. You’re returning to the horror genre. You did Halloween Kills. What is it about this genre that kind of draws you in? 

First of all, that was the only horror film I ever saw as a kid was Jamie Lee [Curtis] in the first Halloween. I think my parents had gone out, and I’m like, “Okay, you have cable, you’re alone in the apartment, what am I gonna do?” So I discovered that film years ago in the ‘70s as a little kid. But Halloween Store came about because I was at the SNL 50th in 2025. And I got to talk to Keenan Thompson, who’s a great guy, I’m a big fan of his. He and his producing partner, Johnny Ryan, have a company called Artists for Artists, and they invited me to take part in this film. It’s called Halloween Store. It’s kind of a horror comedy. It’s a lot of fun. We shot in Hawaii. I mean, how can you say no to Hawaii, right? So we went to Hawaii.  I took my family and it was a great experience, a lot of fun. The young lady who stars in it is Natalie [Allyn] Lind who’s starring on the Dutton Ranch, and she’s a sweetheart, she couldn’t be nicer. She’s one of the producers of the film along with Keenan and his partners and also the executive producer Stephen Schneider that did Insidious and Paranormal Activity. We’re hoping for a big release sometime this year, if not next year. I’m excited about it. But it was a lot of fun. I did it for Keenan and Johnny. These guys have become friends and they’re really talented. I love Keenan. He’s a great, great comic and a great actor and really a nice person. He’s a great guy. So it was fun to do that. 

Then I did this show S.W.A.T. Exiles. I worked with Shemar Moore. He’s the great guy. I guess that show ran on CBS for like eight years. It was a big hit. The spinoff was produced by Sony and they were looking to find a home, and I guess it’s gonna be on Starz now in the fall. So I have S.W.A.T. Exiles coming out, and then Halloween Store as well. 

What can you tease about your S.W.A.T. Exiles character?

You know what’s interesting? Someone was asking me about that this morning. People that live in LA will know who Rick Caruso is. He’s kind of like a Rick Caruso character, a guy who’s a political, a well-to-do guy, a figure who hires this security team. S.W.A.T. Exiles is like this team of young sort of millennial hotshots, male and female, that Shemar has kind of taken the lead of. It’s a spinoff of S.W.A.T., but it’s still S.W.A.T. It was a fun show to be part of. Jerry O’Connell was there. He played the mayor that day, we shot at the Oscar Museum in LA, which was really cool to be a part of. I need one of those golden boys one day.

Yeah, you do!

It was just a great experience. So, as usual I’m just taking care of the family, taking care of business and moving forward.

I have one last question for you and I want to round it back to Nation’s Dumbest. Without spoiling anything, how do you feel about wherever you landed in the show?

I can’t give any spoilers here. I was getting nervous, and that’s a little bit of a clue there. I was there for a while. I’ll tell you this. I think I’m not talking out of school here. I was more than twice the length I thought I’d be there. So it’s 12 people, 12 weeks, and I was almost to the end, to be very honest with you. But it’s a testament to how well it was produced, because there was a wide array of questions. Like I said, it was trivia, brain games, word games, science, math, geography, all kinds of things. And me with my GED, I didn’t feel up to the task, but I got through it somehow, I’ll tell you. It was nerve-racking for sure. Some people want to get right out of there. Like Steve-O was like, “I gotta get back to Nashville. I’m late for clown school.” I was like, “Damn right, Steve-O.” And you can tell Ice-T always looks kind of pissed off, so you know Ice is ready to leave. It got a little nerve-racking. You’ll see. I’m there longer than I wanted to be. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.