Clare Mulroy

Actor, director, and author Andrew McCarthy is taking a closer look at something many men quietly struggle with, friendship.

In his new book, Who Needs Friends?, McCarthy travels across the country reconnecting with people from different chapters of his life, using those encounters to explore what gets in the way of deeper connection and why those bonds can be so hard to rebuild once they fade.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm USA Today books reporter Claire Mulroy.

Today is Thursday, March 26th, 2026.

Who Needs Friends is on bookshelves now, and I'm joined now by Andrew McCarthy.

Andrew, thanks for making the time for us.

I wanted to start by asking you just kind of generally about, you know, I think in the book world now we know you as a travel writer, but I think a lot of people at home are probably watching and thinking of you from your acting days.

And there was this quote that stuck with me from your book where you said, travel has become the university of my life.

And could you tell me a little bit about that, about why travel writing is so meaningful?

Sure.

Did you know that this was going to be a book when you started out on this journey?

You had the paper map, yeah.

Something that I took away from this is that male loneliness can be so persistent sometimes because people go most of their life without thinking about it, just kind of muscling through, being like, I can go alone.

When was the point for you when you – that became conscious for you?

You started thinking about and going back and kind of interrogating your friendships and loneliness.

We get this picture of these cast of characters, obviously they're very real people, very real men with very real friendships.

Are there some groups or pairs that stick with you years down the line?

How do you think we get back to a place where that is, where it's normal, where it's just normal to have your life be bigger, you know?

There's another quote that I had highlighted here and you talking about your relationship with your friends and how it had been a loss, not just for me, but for my children.