{"id":404278,"date":"2025-11-25T19:38:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404278\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:38:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:38:24","slug":"what-mikey-day-watches-and-reads-with-his-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404278\/","title":{"rendered":"What Mikey Day Watches (and Reads) With His Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Sean Zanni\/Patrick McMullan, Will Heath\/NBC), Everett Collection (Geffen Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros.), Toei Animation, Supercell, Roblox, MrBeast via YouTube\n <\/p>\n

Ask a kid who Mikey Day is and they won\u2019t rattle off his SNL bona fides or call out his recent guest spot on Abbott Elementary. They won\u2019t cite his work as the Dollar Rental Car spokesperson or the fact that he penned 2021\u2019s Home Sweet Home Alone alongside longtime writing partner Streeter Seidell. Instead, they\u2019ll point to just one thing: his role as the host of Netflix\u2019s hit baking series Is It Cake?<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I meet a kid and they\u2019re between the ages of 4 and 9,\u201d Day says, \u201cI know they\u2019ll have watched Is It Cake? A lot of SNL hosts with kids that age have even come to me and said, \u2018I\u2019ve got to get a picture with you at some point, because my kids love your show.\u2019 It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s because of kids, Day thinks, that Is It Cake? has been able to soldier on. \u201cI think that after season one, adults would have been like, I get the concept, I\u2019m ready to move on. But when kids like something, they\u2019re all in, so that\u2019s great,\u201d he says. \u201cThat means we get to keep doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With new holiday-themed Is It Cake? episodes hitting Netflix today \u2014 just in time for family movie nights and Thanksgiving baking marathons \u2014 we asked Day what he\u2019s watching, playing, and reading with his 13-year-old son, Abbott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Warner Bros.\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s so different now with the internet and streaming. I don\u2019t know if my son has ever watched a regular TV show like how I used to. His mother and I have made a point of showing him classic movies. We\u2019ll announce them, though, like \u201cIt\u2019s movie night on Sunday and we\u2019re all going to sit down for two hours and watch something,\u201d because kids are so used to the internet and YouTube that the idea of committing to something for two hours can seem astronomical to them.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve shown Back to the Future, Gremlins, The Princess Bride, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Back to the Future went over the best and we ended up showing him the entire trilogy. It\u2019s my favorite movie so I think he was a little biased going into the first one, but he really liked it. Weirdly, though, he did say the third one was the best \u2014 I think because he liked the flying train.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also shown him clips from movies like Spaceballs, just because I mentioned it, and then he wanted to watch that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Universal Pictures\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

My son is really into the Jurassic Park franchise now, too, mostly because he saw Rebirth<\/a> after getting into the commercials this past summer. He wants to watch all of them, but I\u2019m trying to show them to him in the order of how good I think they are, so we started with the original after we saw the most recent one, then we went over to Jurassic World. But slowly, I think we\u2019re going to watch them all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Toei Animation\n <\/p>\n

My son really likes this anime called One Piece<\/a>, which he found independent of me. I try to sit with him to watch stuff like that, but it\u2019s intense. It\u2019s just very loud. Like all the people he watches playing video games online, they just scream all the time.<\/p>\n

I kind of missed the whole anime thing as a kid. I\u2019m sure if I\u2019d done it, I\u2019d be more into it now, but he loves it.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been One Piece characters for Halloween a few years in a row, too, which I love because that\u2019s how I was with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I did try to show him the \u201990s TMNT movie, which changed my life as a kid because I was so enraptured by it, but I think I tried to do it a little too young because he was pretty unimpressed. Maybe if we came back to it now he\u2019d like it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: MrBeast via YouTube\n <\/p>\n

My son is super into YouTube. So much so that he\u2019ll ask, like, \u201cWhen is Josh Plays Minecraft X1 or whatever going to host SNL?\u201d One time, MrBeast was backstage at SNL and so I briefly introduced myself to him when I walked by. When I came home, I was like, \u201cYou know who I met? MrBeast.\u201d On SNL you meet a lot of famous people, but for my son, when I said I met and talked to MrBeast for 30 seconds, that\u2019s what he thought was super exciting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Supercell\n <\/p>\n

We play games together sometimes, but I play a lot of console games and he\u2019s more into mobile games. I\u2019ve played some Roblox with him and there are certain games that I like more on there than others, but I try. We used to play Lego Ninjago together, but now he plays mobile stuff like Brawl Stars, and I\u2019m not as into that. I feel like I\u2019m constantly like, \u201cWant to play this game I found?\u201d Like there\u2019s this one called Split Fiction<\/a>, and he\u2019ll be nice about it, but he\u2019s also like, \u201cI\u2019m good.\u201d Like, \u201cYeah, maybe this weekend!\u201d He just politely puts me off.<\/p>\n

I guess it\u2019s understandable. He\u2019s 13. I don\u2019t know if I was watching a lot of stuff with my dad when I was in eighth grade.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Golden Books\n <\/p>\n

There\u2019s this Sesame Street book called There\u2019s a Monster at the End of this Book that I loved as a kid that we\u2019d read to my son all the time when he was little. I loved that.<\/p>\n

We also had a storybook version of Back to the Future that I read him long before he saw the movie.<\/p>\n

I tried to get him into Harry Potter, even though I never really read that as a kid, but I think we did it too early because it was just too dense. It was like \u201cDad, I\u2019m 4. I\u2019m checking out.\u201d Maybe if we\u2019d done it when he was a little older we might have captured his imagination, but we missed the sweet spot.<\/p>\n

He does love to read, though. He just finished all the Hunger Games books, so that\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Paramount\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

I used to show my son clips from Airplane<\/a>! all the time, so eventually I got to the point where it was like, \u201cAll right, I\u2019ve got to just show him the whole movie,\u201d which he loved. He thinks it\u2019s so funny.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this other Albert Brooks movie, Defending Your Life<\/a>, which I think is criminally underrated. We showed him that, which was fun, because he really liked it and it\u2019s one of my favorite films of all time.<\/p>\n

I think when he gets old enough, I\u2019ll show him the British Office, which is my favorite piece of media of all time, but I don\u2019t want to hit it too early. Maybe when he\u2019s in high school.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Will Heath\/NBC via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

Because of where I work, he\u2019s been exposed to some sketches from SNL, but he doesn\u2019t actively seek it out. Sometimes he\u2019ll sit down and watch stuff, but it\u2019s not appointment viewing. I\u2019ll make a point of showing him stuff sometimes, like years ago we did a Mario Kart sketch with Pedro Pascal<\/a> that he thought was pretty funny, and during election years he\u2019ll watch a little more because his mom gets really into it and talks about the election a lot so he\u2019ll know all the players involved, but I think it just hits different for him.<\/p>\n

I used to tape Saturday Night Live off Comedy Central as a kid, when they\u2019d show the episodes edited down to an hour and I\u2019d be confused because at good nights people would be dressed as things that I hadn\u2019t seen in the episodes. My son has been to the studio and everything, but I think for him, the show is just Dad\u2019s job, and that\u2019s fine with me.<\/p>\n


\n See All<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Sean Zanni\/Patrick McMullan, Will Heath\/NBC), Everett Collection (Geffen Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Warner…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":404279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1022,185,1144,171,69631,147903,190991,123189,53,50612,50320,1933,173,67,132,68,924,1147],"class_list":{"0":"post-404278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-comedy","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-family-entertainment","13":"tag-is-it-cake","14":"tag-kids-movies","15":"tag-mikey-day","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-quality-time","18":"tag-sesame-street","19":"tag-snl","20":"tag-tv","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-video-games","25":"tag-vulture-homepage-lede"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115612032832511870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}