“Malcolm in the Middle” star Justin Berfield said paparazzi should stop hounding former co-star Erik Per Sullivan, who declined to appear in the sitcom’s reboot that dropped on April 10.

“He’s a good guy, and I love Eric,” Berfield said on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast. “I actually feel bad because he wants to stay out of the business and I’ve been seeing paparazzi shots of him. And I’m, like, just leave Eric alone. He didn’t want to come back to the show. No hard feelings.”

Berfield plays big brother Reese to Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), Dewey and other siblings, second in line after the eldest, Francis (Christopher Kennedy Masterson). All cast members but Per Sullivan came back for the new incarnation, “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” which was released on Hulu. Caleb Ellsworth-Clark took over Dewey’s role.

In fact, Berfield regrets that the reboot thrust the very private Per Sullivan back into the spotlight he has eschewed since retiring from acting in 2010. The former child actor has not looked back, Berfield said.

“No. I know they asked him a whole bunch,” he told Mandel. “They asked him like four or five times, and every time he was like, ‘No.’ ”

Both Per Sullivan’s onscreen parents, Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek (Hal and Lois), have said he is immersed in graduate studies at Harvard University.

“He’s studying Dickens and is an incredible student,” Kaczmarek recently told The Guardian. “They offered him buckets of money to come back, and he just said: ‘No thank you.’ ”

Cranston had a similar experience.

“I talked to Erik and I said, ‘Hey, we got the show! It’s going to come back,’” Cranston told Dana Carvey and David Spade on their “Fly on the Wall” podcast. “He goes, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ And I go, ‘Yeah, so we’re looking forward to having you back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t want to do it. But it’s fantastic.’ ”

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