80s Actor Andrew McCarthy Talks Bonding With Son Sam While Walking 500 Miles Across Spain (Exclusive)
“We went pretty quick after I asked!” jokes the elder McCarthy, whose latest book, Walking with Sam, out May 9, chronicles the journey he went on with his son
After walking the Camino de Santiago across Spain some 25 years ago, Andrew McCarthy — known best for his roles in beloved 80s hits such as St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink — wanted to pass that experience on to his son, Sam, as he took his first steps into adulthood (both literally and figuratively).
"Sammy totally walked into his strength without question, emotionally and physically," recalls Andrew of the 32-day trip the pair took across the Spanish country. "Where, that's the difference between 19, and what was I? 58?" he says with a laugh.
Now 60, Andrew is a well-established travel writer, having penned The Longest Way Home and even serving as an editor for National Geographic. And, though this latest book may have started the way all his books do ("Being a travel writer, I always take notes and know that I'm going to write about something in some form," says Andrew), Walking with Sam is inherently unique.
"The Camino's a totally different thing," says Sam, now 21, who enjoyed the experience so much he even walked an extra two days beyond Santiago, Spain, to Finisterre. His father explains how that decision helped cement the concept for the book.
"After Santiago, there's Finisterre, which is the end. So, the metaphor of that, of the next generation going beyond, was so easy for me to latch on to that I said, 'There's a book then,'" Andrew jokes.
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Sam has both walked the walk with his father and talked the talk: he read all of his own dialogue for the audiobook, but he hasn't actually been exposed to the book in its entirety.
"He may be surprised at some things along the way, when he finally listens to it," says Andrew with a knowing laugh — one that every parent will recognize when they're perfectly tee'd up to inevitably embarrass their child.
Throughout the book, Andrew details his complicated relationship with his own father, Stephen, whom he loved deeply, but who also had an explosive temper.
"My dad, he was a very charming, gregarious man who just I think ultimately had a lot of fear in the world that he couldn't acknowledge, and so that manifested as anger with him," explains Andrew. "I wanted to have an active relationship with my son."
Sam, like his father, is an actor in his own right: he starred on Netflix's Dead to Me as Christina Applegate's son, Charlie Harding. Though, it wasn't until after walking the Camino, Sam says, that he consciously decided to pursue acting as his full-time career.
"It gave me really just time to think and breathe, 'cause I don't really think before I had much time to figure out what I wanted to do," Sam explains. "And when I allowed myself to be like, 'do I really want to act?' And then breathed on that, it gave me the freedom to come back and say, 'oh, I really do.'"
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Andrew never wanted any of his three children (he shares Sam with his first wife, Carol Schneider, and has two children, a daughter Willow, 16, and son Rowan, 9, with his second wife, Dolores Rice) to take up what he now calls "the family business," but he, too, came around to the idea after the Camino.
"The Camino brings you home to yourself. And so if that's what [Sam] said to himself, then so be it. Acting saved my life when I was 15, so who am I to say what?" asks Andrew. "I was flailing around. And teenagers have to find something or else they get lost. It gave me a foothold in my life."
Andrew has been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol after his rise to fame in 80s Hollywood — he entered a rehab in 1992 and has been sober ever since.
On their month-long walk, the father and son duo covered nearly every topic one could think of talking about— drugs, alcohol, sex, love, and especially heartbreak, as Sam was in the midst of his first major one.
"There's a great deal of trust on my end towards him because I spent a lot of the time the first few weeks just talking about absolute nonsense that was bothering me," Sam says of how his father handled his emotions. "He had the patience and the grace and the love to just listen to it."
"Well, I had the luxury that you'd never get with adult children, which is time," Andrew volleys. "I didn't have to have answers or solutions or fixes. I just listened."
The pain of heartbreak aside, the duo do admit that there were portions of the walk when they both questioned whether or not they were going to make it all 500 miles.
They would stop to rest at night in different hotels along the pilgrimage, eat food at local spots and bandage their blisters whenever possible.
"It's the best thing I've ever done twice, but there were certainly days, particularly in the end where I'd go, 'I'm never doing this again. I'm wrecked,'" says Andrew.
"I totally disagree. I felt that in the beginning, not towards the end. By week three, I would've done another one right away," says Sam, full of confidence.
"I mean, I was starting to wear down. When Sam's asking me on day two, 'Where's the airport?' I was quietly going, 'I don't know if we're going to make it,'" admits Andrew with a laugh.
But, with 32 days in the rearview, the father and son successfully made it to Santiago.
"I'll remember it my whole life. I hope that he will, too. It's a thing that's hard to forget," muses Andrew. "I have to give a lot of credit to Sam for being willing to do that with his father. When we were walking, we were having a big dinner with a bunch of other walkers one night, and we all went around the table, impromptu. Every one of them said, 'I would never have done this with my father, ever.' And that Sammy did? It was such a—"
Sam chimes in.
"More of a testament to you, Dad, than me."
Andrew pauses, his voice breaking for just one single moment.
"Well, maybe to us. It's a great gift to me," he says. "It was a great gift."
For more on the McCarthys, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE.
Walking With Sam: A Father, A Son, and 500 Miles Across Spain will be in bookstores May 9.
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