Brenda Song thought her Disney Channel past would doom her career. She’s happy to be wrong.
Brenda Song thought her Disney Channel past would doom her career. She’s happy to be wrong.
Taryn RyderFri, February 27, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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Brenda Song stars in the offbeat comedy Operation Taco Gary’s, part of a career run she calls her most “hopeful and fulfilling” yet. (Photo illustration: Nathalie Cruz/Yahoo News; photo: Maya Dehlin Spach/Getty Images)
Brenda Song spent years quietly worrying that the role that made her famous might also define her forever.
“I felt like I walked into every room with Mickey Mouse ears on my head,” she tells me over Zoom as we talk about her new offbeat comedy, Operation Taco Gary’s, in theaters on Feb. 27. For a long time, she feared the image audiences formed watching her as London Tipton in Disney’s Suite Life franchise would follow her into every audition — whether she wanted it to or not.
That insecurity wasn’t just theoretical. Years ago, while working on David Fincher’s The Social Network, Song found herself asking the acclaimed director a question that had lingered in the back of her mind for a long time.
“‘Why did you hire me?’” she recalls, telling him she feared the industry still saw her as the bubbly Disney character she’d once played. “And he said he didn’t even know I was on that show. He told me, ‘If you work with anybody who judges you for what you’ve done and not what you’re doing in the room, you don’t want to work with them.’”
The comment, casually delivered, landed with unexpected force.
“I realized I was the one holding myself back,” she says. “I had to remind myself: I am an actor. I am not London Tipton.”
Even so, fully internalizing that lesson took time. Like many performers who begin working as children, Song says she spent years trying to figure out where she belonged within the industry — and wrestling with the stereotypes that followed her, both externally and internally.
These days, though, that anxiety feels increasingly distant. Song has quietly built one of the most varied runs of her career, balancing a hit Netflix series, prestige projects and family-friendly roles while steadily expanding how she’s perceived in Hollywood.
“Honestly, this has been the most hopeful and fulfilling era of my life, personally and professionally,” she says.
It’s a declaration that reflects more than a busy slate of projects. It signals a broader redefinition of how Song sees herself: as an actor first, not a former child star; as a mother balancing work and family; and as someone who has finally stopped trying to contort herself to meet Hollywood’s expectations.
That evolution didn’t happen overnight. It crystallized, she says, after she became a mom, a life change that forced her to reassess not just her priorities, but also her sense of self within an industry she’d been part of since childhood.
Song and fiancé Macaulay Culkin are parents to two sons: Dakota, who turns 5 in April, and Carson, 3. Just seven months after giving birth to Carson, she returned to work on what would become a pivotal project in her career — even as she was grappling with a far more profound transformation offscreen.
“Becoming a parent changed me on such a core level that I can’t even explain,” she says. “I truly understood what responsibility was for the first time.”
The transformation was so significant that Song made a decision she never expected: parting ways with the representatives she had worked with for 26 years. She was no longer the same person who had entered the business as a child.
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“I felt like I was such a new person,” she says. “I realized I had such a hard time finding where I fit in this industry … and I realized I can’t be anyone but me.”
That realization became the foundation of this new chapter. Instead of trying to control every outcome, Song began embracing a quieter form of acceptance — recognizing that not everything in life, or in Hollywood, needs to make perfect sense.
Ironically, that same theme runs through Operation Taco Gary’s, the chaotic sci-fi comedy she wrapped in 2023, which centers on an alien conspiracy involving a taco chain. When the script first arrived, Song remembers having to physically flip back a few pages to confirm she’d read it correctly.
The project stood out not just for its absurd premise, but because it represented the kind of fearless comedy she once assumed she’d never be considered for. Spoiler alert: She got the role, playing the only female lead in the film. She says working alongside comedic actors Simon Rex, Dustin Milligan and Tony Caballero “really inspired me to let go.”
Shortly after filming wrapped, Hollywood entered the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes, forcing Song — newly navigating life as a mother of two — to confront the possibility that her career might slow down just as she felt ready to expand it.
“I remember telling Mac, ‘I think the best of my career is behind me. I’m good,’” she says. “And he was like, ‘What?’ But when you’re a new mom, you just feel so crazy.”
Within weeks, that fear proved unfounded. She was cast in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl alongside Pamela Anderson, and soon booked Running Point opposite Kate Hudson. The momentum hasn’t slowed: Song is now shooting director Eva Longoria’s buzzy new comedy with Kim Kardashian and Nikki Glaser.
Offscreen, Song credits much of her newfound stability to her relationship with Culkin, who shares her experience of growing up in the spotlight. Having a partner who intuitively understands the industry’s pressures, she says, has been grounding in ways she once doubted were possible.
“I never have to explain anything,” she says. “I can unload at the end of the day with no caveats. I don’t have to edit myself. I don’t have to downplay how much I love sports, but he also understands that it takes me two hours to get my nails done. I go to work and have to kiss guys sometimes, and I never have to be questioned. He just gets it.”
The emotional ease of that dynamic, she adds, has been transformative.
“It’s just so nice to be with someone who sees you at your most tired, your most impatient, your most stressed, and loves you anyway,” she says. “That’s the greatest gift. I really felt like I would never find that because I was unwilling to compromise anymore. And I’m living proof that you can. You just can’t settle for anything less than what you feel you deserve.”
That hard-earned self-assurance now defines how Song moves forward.
“I feel more fearless than I ever have in my life,” she says.
Song describes this phase with a simple framework: Your 20s are for making mistakes, your 30s are for landing and your 40s, she believes, are when you truly thrive. At 37, she’s right on schedule.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
