'Kindergarten Cop' Child Actor Recalls Memorable Gynecologist Line

Miko Hughes explains how he was able to deliver one of the most memorable lines in '90s cinema history when he was just 4 years old.

During an appearance on the Full house Rewind podcast, the 38-year-old spoke about his time working on Kindergarten Copthe 1990 comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a police detective named John Kimble who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher to locate a drug dealer's wife and child and arrest them.

In the film, Hughes played the role of one of the children in Kimble's class. Viewers later learned that he was the son of a gynecologist. In one scene, he told his teacher, “Boys have penises and girls have vaginas.” »

This moment became one of the film's oft-referenced lines and stuck with Hughes, who went on to star in 12 episodes as Aaron in Full house. He told host David Coulier that the quote was not in the original script and was instead a result of the improvement and riffing that Schwarzenegger was doing with all the kids on set.

“I think I was the youngest in class Kindergarten cop,” remembers Hughes. “The stories that I'm told, you know, about my parents, [is that] they didn't have a line for me. I didn't have any lines written. Part of it was written as it was developed on set. »

After observing the “dynamics” between Schwarzenegger and all the other kids, director Ivan Reitman came up with a plan for “who, what and where they wanted to do it all.”

That's when the line was discovered. “The story I'm told is that they came to my parents and said they [wanted me] saying that phrase is pretty provocative,” Hughes said.

Hughes' mother didn't say yes right away. “I guess my mom said she took a few days. She was like, 'It's kind of crazy. I don't know. Is it good? Is it bad?' ”

Finally, she succeeded. “She thought, ‘This is going to be the line that everyone remembers,’ and she went for it,” Hughes said. “And yes, now I will always be known as the 'boys have penises, girls have vaginas' kid.”

Kindergarten Cop received mixed reviews upon its release in December 1990, although the action comedy grossed $202 million on a filming budget of $26 million. It would later become a favorite of a generation of children in the video rental market.

On the Full house Rewind podcast, Hughes praised his work with Schwarzenegger, now 76. “He was fantastic. He was very nice to all the kids,” Hughes said. “He was 'Mr. Serious Action Star' and it was kind of a character break. Kind of a fish-out-of-water situation for him, which was great. It seemed very good for him.”

Hughes also performed very well as a child actor. Apart Kindergarten cop, he made memorable appearances in Apollo-13, The Nanny, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Beverly Hills, 90210, Doogie Howser, Melrose Place, Roswell and many others.

Full house It was a job Hughes did from the age of 3 until he was 9 years old. “My experience has been in films, commercials and movies of the week, and [Full House] “It was the most stagey because of the three cameras and the studio audience,” Hughes said of his time on the sitcom. “There’s this immediate response from the crowd and I think it was very fun and very unique.”

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The actor has since built a large following in the horror genre, thanks to his roles in the 1989s. Animal cemetery and the years 1994 Wes Craven's new nightmare.

“I never really thought I was going to be this horror guy, but [those movies] have a large fan base [and] next in the horror scene,” Hughes said. “So now I go to the counter-horror and I have like a horror follow-up, I guess.