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Chapter 1: What inspired Andrew McCarthy to write about friendship?
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.
Good to be with you.
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.
I mean, that's a bit of a long story, but I'll cut it. Well, travel changed my life. You know, I was young and in the movies, and then I started traveling the world alone.
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Chapter 2: How did Andrew's road trip evolve into a journey of self-discovery?
And I believe travel is not about Instagram posts and, you know, bucket lists, but I think travel is really meaningful, good use of your time. And travel changed my life. It helped me feel at home in the world. The further at home I get, the more at home in myself I tend to feel.
I'm someone who came into the world with a lot of fear for whatever reason, and travel has helped obliterate that for me. It's fostered connection between me and the world. The great travel writer Paul Theroux always said, it's about the traveler, not the destination. I think that's totally true, and most people don't do it.
Anyway, I was traveling, and then one day I just picked up a pen, and I just wrote down something. I was in Saigon. I remember very clearly I was in Saigon. I had this extraordinary day and I came back to my hotel room and I was just buzzing. I didn't know what to do. I had all this energy.
Chapter 3: What insights did Andrew gain about male loneliness during his trip?
So I just wrote down what happened that day and I finished it and I realized it wasn't a journal. It was a story. And I had the same feeling when I finished that writing that, that I had When I was 15 years old and walked out on stage, it's the Artful Dodger and Oliver in my high school play.
And I knew, I felt like my wife is Irish, has these good Irish sayings, and one of them is, I felt like myself from the toes up. And that's how I felt like when I was 15 when I did that play. And I knew in that instant that's what I was going to do with my life. And then... 15 years later, I had the same sensation when I wrote that in that hotel in Saigon. And I'd never written anything.
I was not a reader. I wasn't a writer. I didn't do any of that. But I had that sort of white light experience again of feeling, wow, I really feel like myself when I just did that. So then I just started.
Chapter 4: How do friendships change over time according to Andrew?
And I became successful at travel writing. More answer than you wanted, isn't it? But I became successful traveling quickly because I knew two things. I knew that traveling, I've been saying, is really this profound, important use of your time. It can change your place in the world. And I also knew, tell a story, don't sell a destination.
Did you know that this was going to be a book when you started out on this journey?
No. I mean, this was totally an accidental 10,000-mile road trip, completely. I set off to reunite with some of my friends I hadn't seen in years and years. And so- I went down, drove down to Baltimore to see one friend, and that was a really lovely reunion. So I thought, well, my other buddy lives in Kentucky. That's not that far. I'll just drive to Kentucky.
Chapter 5: What common themes did Andrew encounter when talking to men about loneliness?
And then I was in Kentucky, had a nice reunion. I went, well, how far really is Dallas from Kentucky? Oh, well. Well, it's another thousand miles. And then I was halfway across the country. So I said, well, I'll just keep going. So it turned into this six-week, 10,000-mile road trip that I had no intention of going on.
Which was kind of great, too, because that total improvisational feel of it kept me conscious and awake. There was no plan anywhere. And I didn't use any GPS because I hate being told what to do.
You had the paper map, yeah.
I did. I got one of those big Rand McNally map books. And I was consulting that the whole way. And I was interested in the places in between.
Chapter 6: How does Andrew define true friendship based on his experiences?
I was interested in small. And I hate highway driving. I'm terrified of trucks. So I just was like, I rode back roads the whole way. And that's where you meet people.
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.
Well, I don't think it's just male, but men in particular. Loneliness, I think, is this massive... And, you know, I looked at that a lot in the book.
And it was interesting because all the, so I would, as I was going and I'm reuniting with my friends along the way, I also just stopped and was, you know, encountering men in gas stations and cafes or wherever I was and just sort of would accost them and say, would you talk to me about your friends? And invariably they looked at me like I was nuts. But all of them said yes. No one said no to me.
And so it was fascinating to get all these different perspectives on friendship. And I did encounter a ton of loneliness.
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Chapter 7: What role does vulnerability play in male friendships?
And it was interesting because young people were very easy and quick to say, I'd say, you know, and I asked everyone, I said, are you lonely? Do you get lonely? And the young people just go, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I get lonely a lot. But older people No. Particularly older men would say, no, I don't get lonely. And which I know, and they would always snap it very quick.
And I knew whenever I answer that quick and that fast and that sharp, that I'm either lying or I'm afraid. Because to men particularly, loneliness can be tied in somehow to some kind of weakness. And weakness is the one thing a man can never present as. You know what I mean? So people then just get further walled into this loneliness because they can't allow themselves to be seen in that way.
And if we can't allow ourselves to be seen, we are going to put up a wall and then that's going to isolate us further. And so you just withdraw and pull back and then it becomes a self-perpetuating thing. And I encountered a lot of that as I went along.
Chapter 8: What advice does Andrew McCarthy offer for maintaining friendships?
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.
Well, it was my son. My son – I was sitting at the kitchen table. He was telling me a funny story about one of his buds and we were laughing and then we settled down. He just looked up at me and said, you don't really have any friends, do you, dad? That's the way kids do. I took that hit and then I said, yes, Sammy, I have friends.
I just don't see them, but I know they're there and that's enough. He went, yeah, okay, whatever. He went off and that stayed with me for several days. Because I was like many people, particularly guys, I think, who had this core group when I was young and just sort of blossoming in life and on my own for the first time, this core group of friends.
And they were very instrumental in me becoming who I became. But through life and careers and families, they all scattered across the country. And I realized I hadn't seen any of them in years and years, some in decades. So I just, like I said, my son's comments stayed with me. And I thought, I need to go see these guys and let them know how important they've been in my life.
So that's what was the impetus for the trip. And I imagine I would just fly off to each one at various times over a six-month period or something. But then once the road trip sort of happened and started, I said, this is interesting. And then when I started talking to other men, and then I kind of went, oh, there's a book in here. This is an interesting kind of theme.
And so it just sort of evolved and took on a life of its own.
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?
Yeah, sure. There's these two old guys in Ohio. They're in their 70s, retired cops. And I ran into them at, you know, one of the things that's gone really wrong in America is this gas station slash convenience store slash fast food restaurant that is usurping sort of small town America. And I stopped to fill my tank and I went to get a soda or something.
Then I saw two old guys sitting in the, I think it was an Arby's or something connected to this gas station. and they were just having coffee, and I just went up and approached them, and I said, can I talk to you about your friendship? And they, sure, have a seat. And they were amazing. They'd been friends for 60 years, and they were so intimate and so close to each other.
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