Molly Ringwald Says 'Brat Pack' Title ‘Minimized the Work We Were Doing’: ‘It Was Pejorative’

Mar. 15, 2025

Molly Ringwald in 1985’s ‘The Breakfast Club’ and in 2024.Photo:Alamy; Kristina Bumphrey/Getty

Alamy; Kristina Bumphrey/Getty

Ringwald, 56, explained how she viewed the term at aBreakfast Clubreunion panel at MegaCon Orlando in February 2025, saying, “it was a play on the Rat Pack, which was a group of, you know — Sinatra and Sammy Junior, those guys — and it was a term that was coined after thisNewYorkMagazinepiece, and then we all sort of fell under this, this banner.”

“And I think it kind of in a way sort of minimized the work that we were doing. I mean that’s the way that I felt,” Ringwald added.

As the actress noted, Blum coined the term “Hollywood’s Brat Pack” in a 1985New York Magazinecover story about actorEmilio Estevezand his peers.

Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in ‘The Breakfast Club’ in 1985.Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock

Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock

Like Ringwald, fellow Brat Pack memberAndrew McCarthyhas also said he once resented the name, telling PEOPLE in a 2024 interview he felt it had “personal ramifications.”

“Were we brats? We were certainly privileged," he admitted. “But there wasn’t anything great about us. We were just in the right place at the right time and represented that seismic change in pop culture. You’re easy prey when you’re exposed in that way.”

In a 2024 article penned forVulture, Blum wrote, “in truth, I still don’t understand why some Brat Packers feel so victimized.”

“I figured my cover story — with ‘Hollywood’s Brat Pack’ splashed above a publicity still fromSt. Elmo’s Firethat fortuitously caught Estevez, [Judd] Nelson and [Rob] Lowe in a bar, grinning and hoisting brewskis — would likely annoy these young stars for a few days, and perhaps cause some brief agita among Hollywood publicists who tend to want to control the stories that come out about their clients,” Blum, who was 29 when he penned the original article, wrote in the piece. “Nothing prepared me for the firestorm of attention that resulted.”

In his 2024 documentary about the group,Brats,McCarthy said of the term: “What really upset me about the article was that it felt like, ‘They’re not that interesting in doing the craft of it, they want to be famous and party.’ And I took offense to that. It felt like to me and I know to the other people at the time, ‘We have to reposition this or deflect from this or get away from this.’ Because it certainly wasn’t perceived in the industry as a compliment.”

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Blum — who also appeared in the documentary — told him in response that he was just “doing my job as a journalist” and that the name “wasn’t meant to destroy anyone but really to just define a group of people in a clever or interesting way.”

“I’m proud of it, It’s fine. I have no regrets. I’m glad it lived on forever. But I hope it’s not the greatest thing I ever did,” Blum said, telling McCarthy that “you have to take chances and just swing and do crazy things.”

source: people.com