Danny DeVito recalls nightmare treasure hunt as he talks biggest ‘parenting fail’ with daughter Lucy

Actor joked he was ‘starting to sweat’ while telling the story

Danny DeVito has discussed the time a treasure hunt for his daughter went wrong, becoming his biggest “parenting fail”.

The Matilda star appeared on The Late Late Show on Tuesday (17 January) with his actor daughter Lucy, with whom he co-stars in the animated show Little Demon.

Host James Corden challenged them to a game of “Face Your Father”, where father and daughter had to answer questions about each other.

Corden asked the pair to recall Danny’s worst moments of parenting, with the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star joking that he was “starting to sweat” as he struggled to come up with one for his list.

Danny wrote on his board that he was a “big mouth”, while Lucy’s board simply read “buried treasure”.

Upon reading his daughter’s answer, Danny put his head in his hands and looked shifty, while Corden asked her to explain what she was referring to.

“For my birthday, I had a treasure front and he buried the treasure in the sand so deep that no one could dig it up,” Lucy said. “By the time he got it out of the ground we were already in bed.”

Danny laughed to himself, explaining: “It was a box. They were little kids, they were like seven, eight, nine and the whole idea was they had to dig it out.

“You’ve got these little kids digging out sand, so I call a couple of guys and they come with shovels and by the time they got it out, the kids were done.”

Lucy and father Danny DeVito (Getty Images)

Lucy said that they received the treasure the following day, adding: “No, it wasn’t worth it.”

In adult animation Little Demon, Danny voices Satan and Lucy voices his daughter Chrissy the Antichrist, while Aubrey Plaza brings to life her mother Laura.

In September, a Louisiana congressman hit out at the show, saying that it was “clearly evil”.

Little Demon airs on Disney+ in the UK.