Kieran Culkin Reflects On Sister's Tragic 2008 Death: 'It Doesn't Get Easier'

Kieran Culkin is once again opening up about the 2008 death of his sister Dakota “Cody” Culkin.

“I only knew who I was because of who my siblings are,” Kieran Culkin said. “So, to lose one was losing a big piece of myself. But losing one of my favorite people in the world — it doesn’t get better, and it doesn’t get easier. It’s just, you get used to it.”

Culkin, who has been acting since childhood, garnered acclaim for his role on HBO’s “Succession,” in which he played Roman Roy, the acerbic and emotionally stunted son of a media magnate.

“After a couple seasons on ‘Succession,’ I realized there was some stuff that Roman did that I was like: ‘Oh, that’s my sister. That was her sense of humor,’” said Culkin. “She could find exactly what the right thing to make fun of you was that would get to you, but be really funny and make the room laugh.”

He added wistfully, “That was her.”

Culkin took CBS’s Mo Rocca to his childhood apartment building in New York City, where Culkin and his siblings occupied a third-story walk-up that was so slanted they “used to put cars on one end of the kitchen and let go and see them roll.”

“We lived in a tight space where it was just seven of us running around,” he said. “It was like a sort of little wolf pack mentality.”

Culkin previously reflected on his sister for a 2021 profile in The Hollywood Reporter, saying her death was “the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

“I accepted at the time that this is going to be forever, and it’s never going to be fine,” he told the outlet. “It’s always going to be devastating. I still weep about it out of nowhere. Something funny she did will pop in the head and make me laugh, and then I’m weeping.”

At the time, Culkin said he wished his sister could “meet my kids,” Kinsey and Wilder, whom he shares with wife Jazz Charton. Culkin’s big brother Macaulay Culkin named his own child Dakota that year.