Danny Pintauro defends being an Amazon driver after ‘Who’s the Boss’ fame

Danny Pintauro, who played Jonathan Bower in all eight seasons of the ABC sitcom “Who’s the Boss?” when he was a child actor, made headlines in April after posting a photo of himself on Instagram that showed him working part-time as a delivery driver for Amazon. Fans were shocked to discover that the star of a classic sitcom now delivered packages for a living, but Pintauro explained in a recent episode of the “Pod meets world” podcast (via Entertainment weekly) it is one of the many jobs he currently has to pay the bills as acting gigs are not consistent enough.

“When I posted the photo for [Amazon] Flex, I really didn’t know that… it didn’t occur to me [how people would react] because everyone knows I’m working,” Pintauro said. ‘It’s one of five different jobs I do now. We are performances. Acting is one of the six performances.”

Pintauro said his Amazon delivery job pays about “$80 to $100” for a two- to three-hour shift, adding, “We have to do what we have to do to survive. We have to keep moving as humans. We all do it. In that sense, I’m no different than you. In that sense, we’ve never been different than you. I don’t make any money from residuals.”

The actor explained that he previously faced extreme backlash from fans when he took a job at The Gap for the summer after “Who’s the Boss?” ended its run. “Someone brought a hidden camera, took pictures of me folding clothes and said, ‘He’s already lost all his money, the downfall of Danny Pintauro!’”

Pintauro’s “Who’s the Boss?” character Jonathan Bower was the son of Judith Light’s Angela Bower. The series, which ran for 196 episodes between 1984 and 1992, centers on Tony Danza’s Tony Micelli, who becomes the live-in housekeeper for the Bower family and brings along his daughter Samantha (Alyssa Milano). When Pintauro first revealed his job at Amazon, he wrote in the caption, “There’s no shame in keeping moving. Working hard while ‘not working.'”

“The entertainment world has been so slow, so I’ve done what a lot of people do: figure it out, show up, and take the work that’s there, while continuing to build the work I really want. 38 packages today!” he added at the time.

Speak with People Pintauro noted at the time that “people overestimate what leftovers from an ’80s and ’90s sitcom look like,” which is why he worked so many different jobs. He added, “I invested a lot of that money, but I also used a lot of it to pay for Stanford and get into my early 20s, so it’s not like there’s been endless amounts of money sitting there.”