Kostas Garcia is a fun loving guy from Santa Monica, California. He loves to surf and go to Coachella… like many of the other coasties. But there is something a little different about him. He also was on a reality YouTube show called Summer Break, which has made him pretty famous in the social media world. With whopping 57.9k followers on twitter and a little blue check next to his name, I’d say he’s got a few more followers than most of us. I had the pleasure of interviewing Kostas and we talked a lot about his claim to fame and his plans for the future.
Tell me a little about your claim to fame:
I was on a reality show the summer coming into college. It wasn’t on TV it was promoted through social media and the episodes were on YouTube. The show is called Summer Break.
How did you get started with Summer Break?
It goes back to my junior year of high school. I was on a YouTube series called Teens React, which gets millions of views. I had never done anything in front of a camera or anything before that but a really good family friend of ours asked if I wanted to on the show so I went for it. Before that I was never really big on Twitter or Instagram but during the show I slowly started getting more and more followers so that was pretty cool. I got approached my Junior year by someone as I was walking out of school and they asked me to audition for Summer Break. I auditioned my junior year and they really liked me but they didn’t have anyone to back the show with money. Then, I got an email my senior year telling me that AT&T was going to back the show and they wanted me to audition again. I went through three different audition processes and I ended up getting it.
After the show what was it like?
I came into freshman year with like 30k followers on Twitter, but after the show ended and I was in college, my followers all started dropping because the show was over. Then they came back for a second season and even though I wasn’t on it, my followers doubled.
What are you doing now?
I’m not on any of the shows now, but I do make my own YouTube videos (check him out his YouTube handle is Kostasgarcia) I recently signed to a company that pays people to make YouTube videos and Vines. I am interesting in acting and I would be interested in doing more shows. Being from LA, the entertainment industry has always interested me.
What are the YouTube videos you make now like?
I post anything from vlogs where I just sit in front of the camera and do challenges that are pretty popular (there is a pretty cute video of him surprising his sister), Q&A’s with people from Twitter, or I have a Go Pro so if I do something really cool, I’ll edit the videos and put that up. I recently did Lily’s Classic Boot Hockey Tournament it was our philanthropy for SAE and I filmed the tournament. Videography and editing videos has always interested me so anytime I can make a video and edit it I really enjoy doing that.
What was it like to be on a reality show?
It was stressful in the sense that I had to film with them so I couldn’t always hang out with some of my friends that weren’t on the show because I had an obligation to film. But, I was getting paid to do random fun stuff that they put together for us— it was definitely one of the best summers I’ve had.
Was the show scripted?
It wasn’t scripted in the sense that they were feeding us lines, but if we were driving in the car we wouldn’t be allowed to play music because of copyright issues and stuff. There was one episode I was driving with my friend and the producer was like, talk about donuts. So I had a five-minute conversation about donuts. It wasn’t scripted, but they would kind of tell us what to talk about sometimes to further a storyline.
What was different about being a reality show versus how you act in real life?
I noticed myself paying close attention to what I was saying because I knew they could use anything that I said so I never wanted to talk sh*t or anything about anyone. I never really minded that, but there were people on the show that the producer would ask to talk about drama that was going on in the show and they didn’t really want to talk about it.
Are you still close with anyone from the show?
Well, there was a group of nine of us and it was split up between me and three kids from my high school and then the high school that was fifteen minutes from us. There were four girls and a guy from the other school and three people from my school. I didn’t know anyone from the other school and I knew everyone from my school, but I was only really close with one of them. I became really close to everyone on the show. There were some people that I didn’t really like, but as far as drama goes, I was never really a part of it because I never really had a girlfriend or got in a fight or anything. I would still consider myself pretty close to four or five of the kids.
Tell me a little about yourself. How do you like school? What’s your relationship status? What kind of music are you into? What do you do for fun?
I really hate school right now because of the cold— I really miss summer. I like to surf back home; I just picked surfing up and now it’s like my favorite thing to do. I’m also really into fashion. I started my own clothing line while I was on the show with my best friend back home. It’s called FLAW. I’m pretty into rap. I also really like RnB and Alternative Rock as well. My favorite band of all time is Coldplay. I love the Killers. I’m pretty into EDM. I love ZED. I didn’t use to be as open to all types of music, but after going to Coachella a couple of times… that really opened my eyes u to a lot of different music. My relationship status is Single very, very, single. (laaaaaadies…)
Do you like being single?
It goes back and forth. After listening to some sad Drake I might be in the mood for a girlfriend but for the most part being single is cool.
Well there you have it folks. Kostas Garcia is a pretty cool kid and someday when he’s famous I can say that I was one of the first to interview him. Make sure him to give him a follow on Twitter and Instagram: @kostas95 and KOSTASG95.