Ke Huy Quan says The Goonies cast gave him the first real friends of his life. Long before an Oscar sat on his shelf, a boy from a very large family was still waiting for someone to save him a seat. His childhood came with plenty of moving boxes and relatives, yet very few friends. Then a Hollywood set opened its doors, and the whole picture started to change.

As the crew hunted for pirate gold on screen, something far more valuable was quietly turning up behind the scenes for the newest kid.

The Goonies cast gave Ke Huy Quan his first group of friends. He was 14 when he played Richard "Data" Wang in the 1985 adventure comedy. Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, Jeff Cohen, Josh Brolin, and Martha Plimpton played his fellow treasure hunters.

"I never had friends growing up because I come from such a big family," Quan recalled to TODAY's Willie Geist.

He added, "They didn't treat me like an outsider. They treated me like I was one of their own."

TODAY's sit-down chat also explained why friendships felt so rare for him. Quan, his parents, and eight siblings left Saigon for a refugee camp in Hong Kong before settling in Los Angeles, where his child acting career began. The bond from that set lasted far beyond the shoot. Cohen later became the entertainment lawyer who handled his contract for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the film that won Quan his 2023 Academy Award.

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Friends were not his only surprise, as a mystery envelope from Lucasfilm once left him baffled in the family kitchen.

In his memoir Never Say Die, Ke Huy Quan wrote about his first residual check for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, his debut film at age 12. His parents waited in the kitchen with an envelope bearing his name. Inside sat a Lucasfilm check for almost $100,000, an amount that made no sense to him. At that age, he had no idea what a residual even was.

Quan was surprised to receive extra money on top of his base salary for the film. Once he understood the system, he praised Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for the gesture, and he noted that the sequel was a huge hit and that he was glad to be included. Years later, Quan thanked Spielberg during his Oscar acceptance speech for letting him debut as a child. A boy who once had no friends and no idea what a residual was ended up with both a Lucasfilm check and a The Goonies-sized circle of loyal friends.

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What are your thoughts on Ke Huy Quan's The Goonies friendships and his baffling residual check? Let us know in the comments.