Harvey Guillén on Saving His House from L.A. Wildfires

Variety

Transcript

00:00I feel like, you know, I'm from Altadena in my house, in my neighborhood, and what's happened has been really tragic.

00:05And a couple days ago, we got a chance to go back into that area, and there was this mural on the side of this historic building.

00:13The building was burned down, but this side of the wall was all brick, and the mural was there, and it just said,

00:18Altadena, and it's a beautiful mural, and it's just so poetic, because it's just what the city is.

00:23It's, you know, yes, it's had a hard time, but it's still standing, it's in the rebuild.

00:29Yes, I'm helping rebuild in any way I can. I can't live in my space, obviously, in the near future,

00:35but I have hope. I hope Altadena is such a beautiful place.

00:40I caught on fire, but fortunately enough, I was spared, and there's damage to my house,

00:48but nothing in comparison to my neighbors, and that's why I've been trying to help in any way I can.

00:52We started fund-raising, and we were able to fund it for our neighbors, and these people lost everything.

00:56Everything. So I had this guilt for, you know, a couple of weeks that I literally had gone and asked...

01:02It's like Survivor's Village.

01:03Yeah, Survivor's Village. I had this guilt of, you know, I went to my backyard and I asked ancestors that night,

01:08when it was windy, I was like, please protect my house, please protect my house.

01:11And wouldn't you know it, every corner of my house, the trees, the fence, everything, my neighbor's house,

01:15everything caught on fire, but before I left, my neighbor gave me some really good advice.

01:20He's 80, and he did not fight for it, and he decided to stay, and he just hosed down his house,

01:25and he was like, Harvey, if I was you, before you leave, you hose down your house, and I said, you're right,

01:29and I put, like, I hosed down the house, I put sprinklers on the top of the roof,

01:33I turned the sprinklers around the front and the back, and let them on.

01:36Just let them all on, and my ring light kind of came on at 4 in the morning, and it was raining fire.

01:42All the palm trees that caught on fire, they were falling down from the sky with just balls of fire.

01:46My ring light caught it all, and I was like, oh my God, and then just balls of fire falling down to my grass,

01:51and it would dissolve automatically, because there was puddles of water everywhere.

01:54So I just, I don't know why, but that was the way the universe worked, and it saved my house, it saved it in that way.

01:59And the 80-year-old neighbor's house is safe?

02:01It's safe, yeah.

02:03It might be a UFO.

02:04Is it hard for you to be doing this?

02:06It's a little hard because of, you know, I put off work for the last month, I stopped production,

02:12I was supposed to do other events and recordings and everything, and I went into a really kind of depressed,

02:18dark place because, you know, I've never been in this place.

02:21I've never been in a situation where my community is mourning, and I don't know what to do, I feel helpless.

02:26My house is, you know, it's still standing, but it's damaged, and I can't go live there, and it's toxic,

02:32and it's like lead paint and all these things, so it was hurtful.

02:35It was hurtful, and I had people reach out.

02:37I sent out a friend, Kathy Griffin, and reached out and said, come stay with me, what do you need?

02:42And it really warmed my heart, just because it's like the community did reach out, as you know,

02:46we're part of this group chat.

02:48People really reached out to us and said, how are you doing, how are you doing?

02:52Yeah, yeah.

02:54Living life, life is life.

02:56I don't know why I'm going to say this.

02:58Let's just move in.

02:59Yeah, let's just move in.

03:02You know what we do in times of chaos and mourning and darkness?

03:06We need to do this, we need to create entertainment, because we need to escape.

03:09So I'm really excited to promote this movie.

03:11It's such a fun movie, it's a thriller.

03:13The less you know about it, the better.

03:15Because I didn't know.

03:16Yes.

03:17That was on my honorable mentions.

03:18I know.

03:19Yeah, exactly.

03:20The less you know about it, a very bright and brilliant and wise person who recently just told me by the name of Allah,

03:26the less you know about it, the better.

03:28And I think they're absolutely right.

03:30How much fun was it having Lucas as your boyfriend?

03:32Oh, my God.

03:33We had to do the kissing scene so many times.

03:35I'm in therapy for it.

03:37It's just, he's such a charmer, such a lovely guy.

03:40You know, it's funny, we were both in a relationship at the time when we were filming this,

03:43and we were so madly in love, we brought that love into these characters,

03:45and now they live forever on screen, and now we're both single.

03:48I was going to say, now you're going to tell me that you're in love.

03:51Well, we are in love.

03:52We kind of said, look, it worked out for the best, and we've been holding each other,

03:57we've been holding space for each other.

03:59Yeah.

04:05You look great.

04:06I'll see you again.

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