Domingo—following sound journalistic protocol here—follows up by inquiring about the other bracelets, “only because [they’re] so significant.”
Culkin runs down the beaded bracelets on his right wrist, identifying where each one came from: most from his children, others given to him by fans at events, one he got in Mexico with his wife. He adds that he received at least a few by simply asking the bracelet’s previous owner if they would give it to him, as though it were the shirt off their back.
“It’s funny. If you just ask people for things, sometimes they give it to you,” says Culkin, adding that he’d collected this particular stack of bracelets over the course of about a month. Whenever his wrist fills up, he takes them off and starts again.
“I love that you remembered exactly every one,” says Domingo.
Culkin, it appears, has been practicing this magpie-like adornment ritual for decades now. (Same goes for his penchant for one-handed nail polish.) The meaning of the bracelets, the actor told Rolling Stone earlier this year, is “usually not that interesting. Some of them I take. Some of them people give me. Some of them I buy. Two of these have the names of my kids.” When the reporter explained to Culkin that plastic-beaded friendship bracelets have become a symbol of Taylor Swift and her fandom, he balked at the association.
“See, I don’t even get the reference,” Culkin told the magazine. “People keep saying, ‘Oh, Taylor Swift…’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what that means. I’ve been wearing tons of bracelets for, like, twenty years.’ They’re supposed to mean something? … I don’t know. I’ve never been to a Taylor Swift concert.”
No doubt that if he had, he’d have been the wiliest bracelet trader the Eras Tour had ever seen.
