Many people will likely agree that 2020 was the worst year they have ever experienced. Today marks the first day of 2021. If you watched the ball drop in Times Square last night on television, you saw a very different scene unfold in New York City. Pandemic frontline workers gathered in pods to attend the world-renowned annual New Year’s Eve ceremony.
The area that’s usually packed with over one million guests from all over the world was sparsely populated. Over the course of the horrific past year, we’ve arguably become numb to things “being different.”
At the stroke of midnight 2020 vanished and 2021 stepped in. Today, millions of people are desperately hoping we can find our way back to normalcy somehow. We want to hug our family members and spend time with our friends. We want to slay the COVID dragon that has spawned over 79 million infections and caused 1.7 million deaths around the world.
Actor Gilles Marini carries all those same wishes as 2021 stretches before us. Every year since 2011, Gilles and I have done a holiday interview. This year was particularly painful for me. I lost my dad in the blink of an eye – he was making a simple trip to McDonald’s and never came back. He sustained fatal injuries in a car accident right before the first COVID cases were identified here in the U.S. in March.
Gilles and I have been friends now for 11 years. I’ll never forget his words of comfort on the phone within hours of my mom, brother, son, and I trying to absorb the shock of my dad’s sudden passing. As always, he extended love and prayers and encouraged me to be strong for my mom in the days that followed.
Sadly, Gilles and I now share the loss of our fathers – though he lost his dad, Georges, at an incredibly young age – 19. I was blessed to share all kinds of milestones with my dad across multiple decades.
Our dads were both huge givers. Georges Marini was the town baker in Cannes, France and he frequently gave needy people food to eat and a place to sleep. He repeatedly told Gilles and his brother and sister that they should always live their lives to show love, kindness, and generosity to others.
Gilles Marini Twitter
Gilles continues to dedicate his life to honoring his father’s legacy of love. He is one of the kindest, most compassionate people I have ever known.
My dad was the executive director of the Old Newsboys of Flint, a nonprofit here in Michigan that helps children and families in need have Christmas. To date, ONB has helped over 824,000 kids have something under their Christmas tree. Everything that Christmas meant to my dad is weighing heavily in our hearts – as we spent our first Christmas without him this year. My entire county mourns my dad’s loss – just as an entire town lined up for Gilles’ dad’s funeral.
Gilles and I are not alone in dealing with loss, especially in 2020. He reflected on the unprecedented chaos that has ravaged the world since March with subdued observation.
“No one was ready for this. Anything you have in your life that is negative and difficult accentuates tenfold,” he said. “I’m at a loss. I’m usually pretty good at feeling and seeing what good will come in the near future. But right now, I don’t think anybody really can. It’s up to mother nature to calm down. It’s up to us to start loving one another a little bit more and start listening. You can say, ‘Oh, it’s 2020.’ But it’s us. It’s a lot of different things from all this racial tension to the pandemic to shutting down the entire planet.”
Like millions of families across the globe, the Marini family hunkered down together and didn’t know what to expect when the pandemic was first declared. Gilles, his wife Carole, son Georges, and daughter Juliana gathered a few close friends and secluded together at their cabin in a remote part of California for months at a time last year.
“We’re in the middle of the national forest. There’s a dirt road and around me is the national forest. There are no human beings for miles. So that might be why we haven’t caught the virus,” Gilles said.
Gilles and his family remained healthy through the course of the year. Anyone who followed Gilles’ breathtaking journey on season eight of “Dancing with the Stars” knows how physically fit he is. So, it’s no surprise that he spends a lot of time lately working out. He’s also skilled in martial arts and Georges and Juliana have followed in his footsteps. Gilles posted a video on Twitter of working with his kids on the mat.
The everyday beat down my daughter is giving me. 😂🥊. She’ll be ready, your kids should too. Put them in #jiujitsu and a little striking for good measures. 🥋 pic.twitter.com/DJdJWwjfCL
— Gilles Marini (@GillesMarini) November 14, 2020
“Georges won two world championships and one national championship. He’s a really good fighter. Juliana is more of course – a young woman,” said Gilles, “So, I teach her a little bit more striking lately and Jiu-Jitsu is secondary because she’s really good at Jiu-Jitsu.”
“Teaching it to your kids is vital to me – in a time where you can really focus on what’s next for your kids, you can look at this young woman starting to grow and turning from a child to a young girl and now a woman. So, in case of a very crazy situation, I’m more at ease to know that my daughter will be able to utilize everything she ever learned in a very gentle way that’s why we call Jiu-Jitsu the gentle art. In a very smart, gentle, maneuvering way – she’ll be able to escape any disturbing situation -like potential abuse – that might otherwise affect her mind forever.”
Juliana is currently attending school online. Luckily, she’s able to count martial arts workouts with her dad toward her PE credit, and they both like working together.
When he’s acting, Gilles could be away on location and might easily spend weeks or months away from his family. With a large part of Hollywood/filming being shut down due to the virus for months, he hasn’t worked in a year and really enjoys being able to spend this extended time with Carole and the kids.
He also realizes that many marriages or family relationships can potentially become strained after spending so much time together. But this is not the case for him. He described his time at home with his family as “absolutely incredible.” He added, “I cannot stay one second away from my wife and I know she feels the same way.”
via Gilles Marini Twitter
Back in 2019, Gilles and Carole suffered a terrifying experience when they went to a club in Vegas and someone drugged Carole’s drink. She had seizures and fell, hitting her head hard on the floor. Gilles was terrified and used his firefighter training to help her. Thankfully, medical help also arrived and she ended up spending that night in the hospital. During that experience, Gilles felt like he could have lost everything in an instant – if he would have lost his wife.
“it was devastating. It shut me down completely. I didn’t want to do anything, I just wanted to be with her because it was traumatic to me at first,” Gilles explained. “I was very focused. Thank God I used to be a firefighter. it was the worst experience I’ve had. That really threw us into a crazy loop. Also, when she seized, she fell straight down onto a marble floor and hit her head so hard – so she had a concussion and that was 2019. Then 2020 happened and I just spend time with this woman that I love more than anything in the world.”
The entire entertainment industry has suffered due to the virus. Live concerts at large venues are suspended, and film and TV crews are just starting to figure out how to safely shoot new and returning series and movies.
Gilles starred in his first-ever Christmas movie, “A Taste of Christmas,” in 2019. It premiered in 2020 on Nov. 20 on Lifetime. The former “Brothers and Sisters” star loved working on the project.
In the film, he plays the suave, talented, but sometimes testy Italian chef Stefano to perfection. Stefano encounters some struggles in getting restaurant owner Olivia’s (Nia Vardalos) quaint Italian restaurant open for Christmas. While mitigating challenges, he falls in love with Olivia’s cousin Natalie (Anni Krueger).
Credit: Lifetime/Gilles Marini Twitter
The movie is funny, romantic, and heartfelt and Gilles loved the experience.
“I love Christmas movies. I love when people are showing love and Lifetime are rock stars – the PR they had and the way they put the movie out there, the love they had for the movie was really sweet,” he said. “I can’t wait to work for Lifetime again – it’s such a great company and I’d love to do more Christmas movies. Lifetime also gives you the opportunity to push the envelope a little bit more. So, I can’t wait to work with them again and it was fun because people watching could feel in a time where feelings were kind of disappearing from everybody’s body with this nightmare of 2020.”
One could argue that arts and entertainment are necessary to distract us from the devastation that is happening around us. Gilles said that he’s learned the opposite is true and it’s been humbling.
“As actors, I believe 2020 humbled all of us. Understanding that we are not essential. We do not mean anything to this world,” he conveyed. “I thought that entertaining people and making them feel good in a dark time was crucial. But what’s crucial is surviving and it is humbling knowing my job doesn’t mean anything and my passion is the only thing that really matters — even if my job doesn’t mean anything to others. That was a big stab.”
Gilles is right. On New Year’s Day 2021, the U.S. passed a grim milestone of 20 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and a cumulative total of 346,000 American deaths. In any case, saving lives is top priority.
However, the economy is also impacted by the horrific disease – including the film industry. According to the World Economic Forum, Hollywood “supports more than 2 million jobs and 400,000 American businesses.”
Film production has stopped or is delayed on many projects and movie theaters are closed in many cities and states. Binge-watching shows on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video has become a go-to part of lockdown or quarantine entertainment.
People in multiple facets of the entertainment industry are unemployed and like other parts of the U.S. economy, there are lots of uncertainties about the future.
Gilles has watched fellow acting friends work at other jobs to make ends meet during the entertainment shutdown and has been sickened by people using social media to mock them.
“It is so devastating for someone to not be able to work elsewhere in fear of having an entire population say, ‘We’re so happy he failed.’ Or the fear of someone saying, ‘It must not be a passion of yours because now you’re working in a garage repairing cars.’ So, it’s difficult to be in a position of fame and being in the limelight and having the world stop – and if you do anything that’s not really your job – people will just mock you. We should also be able to express our opinion without feeling like we’re walking on eggshells and fear we’re going to be judged.”
The charismatic actor also holds these realizations in check as he looks at the current homelessness crisis around him in Los Angeles. He is bowled over by the terrible situation and seeing the fallout that the virus is causing on American soil.
“We all have situations. I’m complaining about really losing everything and at the same time if I go under an overpass on the highway in LA – there are people half my age, in the street, making a tent and you know it’s a tent they used to have in their garage that they didn’t ever use,” Gilles said. “Now they are using that tent to live in a different place. We are in America. We are not in a poor country. But yet you can see the damage from this disease and animosity in human beings – the fact that we are insensitive to people dying of coronavirus at home makes us who we are.”
One person that continues to inspire Gilles is his best friend Eric who lives in France. He’s endured some devastating experiences over the past year – including losing his mother and battling cancer.
“Eric Sarramagna is my brother by choice. Eric was my brother in arms in the service – in the special forces. After the service, he went down to the south where I lived. He’s everything to me, Lori,” Gilles said, “He’s my family. I would lay down my life for this guy for sure. My wife would completely understand.
In life what you want is love – and health – of course – but love and family. He lost those three – in a 6-month period. I had him on the phone about two hours ago in France and said, ‘How are you doing brother?’ – I talk to him at least twice a day and he said, ‘I’m good, I’m good.’ and I said, ‘What’s up?’ and he said, ‘It rained all day.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And that’s all I said because when it rains all day – he can’t even go outside and get fresh air. He had so much chemo that if COVID-19 comes around – he would die. His immune system is creeping up again so we’re very excited.
Also, the person he’s been with for 11 years did something horrific. So, every time I bitch about anything – I just think of my brother and I feel okay. If I were in his shoes, I don’t know if I would want to live. If I didn’t have my wife and kids – I wouldn’t want to be here. That’s how deep the scars are, and all this happened to my friend and not a hair on his head and he still tells me, ‘Everything will be fine, Gilles. We still have all this time left and as soon as I can take a flight, I’ll come see you.’
That’s the man who tells me that we’ll be fine – that man, who lost everything. I have a lot to learn. He’s my hero. I’m going to tell you the strength that Eric has reminds me of the strength of my father and that’s probably why I love him so much.”
Among Gilles’ biggest hopes for the new year, is that people find genuine unity and instead of telling people what we don’t like about them or how we disagree – that we try hard to see another point of view and value all the other attributes a person has that we do like about them.
Furthermore, he hopes people start using common sense and human compassion to help stop the virus from spreading. He feels strongly that we need to stop villainizing youth who are trying to live their lives in a very dark time. Instead, he feels it’s up to each of us to “nip it in the bud.” We need to take care of ourselves without being told what to do – including doing everything we can to protect the elderly and the vulnerable people around us – even if that means not visiting them right now.
He also has high hopes for vaccines to help us return to a pre-pandemic life. “I want to hug. I want to kiss. I want to have a normal life,” he said. “I want the vaccine to help us as soon as possible.”
Overall, Gilles realized that for him the silver lining in 2020 was the love that flows within his own family. “My family makes me believe I’m the king of the castle and I’m very aware that I’m not. But they always make me feel good and important. Love is the positive – and I have never been more in love with my wife – like we just met and we’re 22 years old.”
via Gilles Marini Twitter