Andrew McCarthy Opens up About His New Book ‘Walking With Sam’ (Exclusive)

Andrew McCarthy is known for acting in popular movies such as Pretty in Pink, Weekend at Bernie’s and St. Elmo’s Fire. But the 60-year-old actor is also a successful writer who just released a new book called Walking with Sam, which is about him and his son walking 500 miles across Spain’s Camino de Santiago. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to McCarthy about why he took on the journey with his son. 

“I wanted to try and deepen our connection so that we took something away from it,” McCarthy exclusively told PopCulture. “But I wanted him to know that he was okay in the world. And there’s something about the community. There’s a beginning, and there’s a long slog, and you arrive somewhere, and there’s something very deeply satisfying about arriving after such a long sort of… And over time, after four or five weeks of walking 500 miles to arrive somewhere, and you know, you can’t take that accomplishment away from yourself, and no one else can either. It may have no real value in the world, but it has a profound internal value, I think. And to know that you’re okay, and you can get from here to there, and on a literal level and an emotional spiritual one. And I think that does that for us. It did that for me the first time I walked it.”

At the start of the book, McCarthy talked about doing the walk by himself over 25 years ago and how it impacted him. Now that he did the walk with his son, did it have the same impact? “I had a lot less fear, but I also became aware of how much I felt the burden of responsibility to take care of my… So, as in this case, my eldest son,” McCarthy explained. “And how much of that burden of responsibility is really real, and how much it’s just me indulging my own sense of anxieties and things, what’s appropriate and what’s just my own crap that I’m projecting onto him. Because that’s what we do with our loved. Sometimes we just project our own nonsense onto them, and then say it’s theirs. And the Camino certainly helps illuminate what’s yours.”

McCarthy, who has written books such as Brat: An ’80’s Story and Just Fly Away, revealed this book is the most emotional one he has written since it involves his relationship with his son Sam. “Every time you write a book, you feel a bit naked when they come out,” he said. “You write this stuff in privacy, and you pour your stuff out, and you kind of don’t think about that one day it’s going to be out in the world. But yeah, with this one, it’s the same, but then I add to that my son is in here, so I feel particularly precarious and exposed.”

And for those who are looking to walk the Camino de Santiago, McCarthy has some advice. “Just go,” McCarthy stated. “Don’t think about it too much. You think about it too much, you’ll rationalize yourself right out of it. Fear will masquerade as prudence, and practicality, and all that nonsense, but it’s just fear. Just buy a ticket and go. You need nothing. It’s not like walking the Appalachian Trail where you have to know how to camp and carry 80 pounds on your back. You need nothing. You need a good pair of walking shoes. You don’t even have to know where you’re going because there’s these yellow arrows painted on the ground, and on trees, and on rocks, pointing you across the entire country.” Walking with Sam is available nationwide now.