Emmy-winner Kristos Andrews is one of the shiniest star in Hollywood nowadays, not because just his talent and his dedicated, professional attitude, but his modest and kind personality. Next to it, not many people know about him, that he was a Guiness World recorder skateboarder before he became the star of the multiple Emmy-winner online series The Bay. As he says, skateboarding taught him about what it means to fall and get up, and he’s always been an athlete in his hearth. In 2021 Kristos was co-starring with Bruce Willis in Lionsgate action movie, Survive the Game. He led movie The Magic, what released on VOD, Amazon Prime and Apple TV, and The Bay new season is just out. I asked Kristos about his life from the very beginning till his great success in Hollywood.
In America we got used to that many people has unique names, but I’ve never met a ‘Kristos’ before. What’s the story behind your name?
It’s a combination of my mom and dad, sort of a brain storming name. My Dad spent some time in Greece and my mom wanted to be sure that its not just a name. She wanted to pray about it and see what would come up. She said that the name came very clearly. One morning she was crying about it – literally – and she said it came to her like the sunrise. She heard it and she felt it. And it ment a lot to me to say that, made me feel like it was very meaningful and ment to be. This is how she described it to me.
I know about your loss and I can’t imagine the pain to loosing a mother so early. Your mother was an artist and I can tell by her beautiful paintings that she was a very special person. Has your mother given you any advice that has stayed with you for your entire life?
On a contrary to most parents, which would encouraged school, going to university, or getting a “normal” job, it was very interesting, my mom just highly encourage me to go for my dreams. Do artistic things and be creative… just anything creative. She mentioned that ‘yes, your grandpa went to Cambridge and the family is all gone on a University, often times do something completely different afterward anyway.’ I know it’s sounds like a cliche, but she really encouraged me. So this is the sort of things what stayed with me, sort of engagement with the creative lands, and put my hearth into it creatively, no matter what it is what I do, and I kept that with me. And that I really appreciate about her. Because it have a lot of faith to take that path, to take that journey being artist, being creative and actually make something of it.
When you were a child your parents already discovered you and your sisters’s talent for acting?
I feel like it’s a combination to having faith and the talent or ability of a potential with talent or creativity or being an artist or putting talent in something. They had a lot of faith in us. It was more like to encouraged us, not so particularly about one thing or the other, but encouraged us with a lot of faith a general meaning of to be creative and having talent, and putting talent wherever our desire might be. So it was a nice open door, what was encouraging us about just going for something where you build the talent in. That kind of a thing.
Did they support you to choose the acting career?
It’s interesting. I did the play when I was younger. My mom who would kind of forced it, I wanted just go to skateboarding, and every Saturday I had join this theatre group… And actually it grown on me… I got along with everyone and it became more like as a passionate thing, stepping into these roles I think I extended my personality a bit. It how me to understand other different type of people much better. It was a nice community feeling working with everyone. My dad also took me to the play in Santa Monica. We just did that. I did that when I was a teen, maybe from age 12-14. And then I was just completely stopped and skate boarding. Pursued that competitively. It became my own independent choice. And in the high school I made an extra semester and one of my best friend on that time, David, he really encourage me to do a play, what he literally created a play there and I thought it was a lot of fun and a passionate good fun with friends. It was a fight club, it was a short play. It was a kind of real awakened me to the passion on me on my own way. My parents already gave up on me they said, ’skateboard, ok, sure… hopefully you will do some creative later’ But I made my own decision that time, what was cool.
Well, I live in Venice Beach where you grown up and it’s is a Paradise of skateboarders, so I’ve seen with my own eyes, that skateboarding can be very dangerous! Have you ever injured yourself as a skateboarder?
Yes! I broke my knee twice and the most accurate one was when I broke my tailbones. That’s painful, you can’t do anything, you can’t sit, you can’t drive…
How you feel, did the physical injuries make you feel stronger mentally?
Yes. I totally resonate with that. Every time an injury would happen, some people would stay, that “that’s it, that’s the last one. I am ot doing ot anymore.” And it’s happen all the time. And skateboarding is more about falling and landing. And I think that more than a physical fact it’s definitely has its way of conditioning the mental aspect of things. So to continue after the fall, to expect a fall as a learning experience to get up and do it again with more knowledge and more strength. Skateboarding generally a life of metaphor.
I am sure you needed all your strength in the most challenging time when you lost your mother and. Who are those friends who supported you in that truly difficult time?
Definitely friends and family. Best friends from my high school, Gregori of course who is like brother to me so long. And his family. My sisters, my Dad, my step mom, my family in over in England. It’s nice, because when a tragedy happens like that, you just don’t recognize the world in the same way afterwards. There is a sweetness to it where the support comes in and its also reminded about how many people you have and how closely you have them. And it was nice to feel that family do that and friends do that. It was family and friends. I feel like it still a process, it’s hard to fully accept the loss my mother. But it is what it is, its part of life and I feel like it giving us more depth and I feel like I still connected her in comprehensible but more profane.
You mentioned television producer and director of The Bay, Gregori J. Martin’s name, who is not just a close colleague for you, he is also a friend – you said he is like your brother. How long have you known each other?
Quite simply he walked into my mom’s art gallery in Marina del Rey one day. I was 19. It was the period when I wasn’t sure if what I wanted to do. “Shall I pursue skateboarding or shall I pursue acting?” I kind of like skateboarding but I also felt I might not have the passion for skateboarding looking ahead that what I am in my thirties and I really wanna pick up the skateboard and go up and skate every day whether I like it or not because its my profession. So I had to really think about it. During that process Gregori showed up with all the faith in me I don’t no where. My mother’s publicist wanted me to act and Gregori was doing coaching for starting actors and he started coach me. And next day he said, “You know what, you can really do something with this.” And I had a lot of faith in it. ‘What ever it is, just do it,’
How did you get cast for the lead role of The Bay?
Next thing I was know to casting on The Bay. Gregori’s cousin, who was playing the roll, tragically passed away over in New York and Gregori said he needed someone who he has the connection with. Like familiarity what it isn’t just like a cold casting. And he said, you gonna do it, that’s you. You gonna play my cousin. So it really worth to shifting from skateboarding to acting, because I really new that I had to honored this role. This was a real situation. The family just lost someone tragically and if I not gonna do a good job as an actor I would be dishonoring it. So I gonna do the best job I can possibly do. I had to really be authentic, so I moved from LA to New York and I lived there for five months and all observed what it is. And it wasn’t about to be an actor, it was about to honoring the situation. Thats also made me and Gregori as family. That period of time change my life I think. I am very grateful in a retrospect that I had it all.
Did Gregori being a Puerto Rican influence to move to shoot season seven of The Bay in Puerto Rico?
Yeah, definitely. And he is proud of that. He came to visit the set while I was filming there with Bruce Willis. And I think I inspired him, that “oh, I am also from here, I am Puerto Rican myself.” and he moved The Bay to Puerto Rico, we shot the season seven there. It was really fun and everything looked beautiful on camera. It was nice to be doing what we love and also being in the Paradise. We had a lot of material so we had to stay focus, we can’t just wondering into the island Paradise. But we had a little bit of time afterwards what was cool.
You are very close to your sister, Celeste Fianna and you are also colleagues on the set on The Bay. How is it to work with such a close relative?
It’s nice. In the end of the day you trust them, they’ve been with you in life this long. Thy definitely will always with you and you can trust them trough on the details
We try to stick to the goals and we try to be present. ItS actually makes us closer. People things that it’s not real if you don’t fight, but it is real, it’s real. You just can’t choose not to.
You and The Bay recently won the Burbank Film Festival and you already have several Emmys at home. What to these awards mean to you as in 2021 many actors have been saying that there’s not much value any more to winning awards?
I think it’s a tremendous honor. Someone can have a big fun-base and a big audience and that’s a blessing but in a deeper sense its nice to have recognition from our piers that you are actually doing it. You recognized to your hard work. To be recognized how much soul you put in to your work. That means so much to me. It’s a huge honor to me.
Where are you keeping the Emmy-awards? Does they have a special spot in your home?
It’s here! (He is showing it.) It’s nice to wake up and see it. Could be having a hard day, and it’s important to have a certain reminder, that I am on the right path. I am love doing what I do anyway, but it is a nice reminder, it’s encouraging to keep going.
If you would only have one wish, what would you like to have for Xmas?
Love.
Dont you have enough love?
Thats a good question…! I’m feeling no one can have enough love. It’s something that you can receive, but it’s a platform we can exist on. It’s a platform what never be overflow too much. I feel that. It’s the most natural feeling.
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Photo: Kristos Andrews Instagram-page.
