Brat Pack Stars Recall How Nickname Affected Their Careers: ‘It Tried to Diminish Us’

Demi Moore

Demi explained that her youth contributed to her taking offense to the phrase, reflecting on why she perceived it “as something bad” in the past.

“I felt like a sense of it being unjust. I just felt like it didn’t represent us, and I felt like it was a real limited perspective,” the Songbird actress explained. “It stayed with me for a while just as I did press things, ‘The brat pack blah blah,’ but I don’t know if I took it as personal over time.”

Demi compared the term to feeling like the rug was pulled from under her. “I look at everything as happening for us not to us and you can’t be selective with that,” she continued. “The fact that came out and it tried to diminish us was also an opportunity to rise above and to say no, I’m much more than that, I am not for whatever reason the offensive part of kind of being seen as a brat.”

Emilio Estevez

Emilio said there was more “damage done” by the term than good but wasn’t sure if he would take back the nickname if he had the power to do so.

“That’s a difficult question to answer because you could only know the known,” he told cameras. “Was it something we benefited from? Maybe. But in the long run, I think we did not.”

Rob Lowe

Rob said “no one liked” the term Brat Pack. He called it a “f–king disaster” and only later realized what a “meanspirited” attempt it was to “minimize” their talents.

“I get why it happened,” he explained. “There’s just too many of us so there had to be a catch-all name and Brat Pack is a good name.”

Anthony McCarthy

“Once the ‘Brat Pack’ thing happened, everyone just sort of scattered because it was such a stigma early on that we didn’t want to be associated with it,” Anthony said. “I’ve never talked to anybody about what that was like. It certainly was a defining thing in my life.”

David Blum — Writer of the ‘Brat Pack’ Article

After the article was published, David said it didn’t affect his career like he “thought it was going to.”

“I’m proud of it, it’s fine, I have no regrets,” he explained. “I’m glad it’s lived on forever, but I hope it’s not the greatest thing I ever did.”