Tag: evacuated

Antonio Banderas‘ family in Los Angeles remains safe, weeks after a series of devastating wildfires broke out across the city.

Banderas, 64, tells PEOPLE in a recent interview about his Bosch Super Bowl commercial that his ex-wife Melanie Griffith and other members of her family stayed with their daughter Stella Banderas after they were ordered to evacuate from their homes in the initial days after fires burst out across L.A. county on Jan. 7.

“With Dakota, I think she was out of Los Angeles,” Banderas says of his stepdaughter Dakota Johnson, who has been photographed traveling through India with her fiancé Chris Martin during Coldplay’s world tour in recent days. “But I talk all the time with my daughter Stella. I continue doing it and I know everybody’s fine. I know that Melanie was at some point, the whole entire area where she lives, they got the evacuation. And so her, my ex mother-in-law, some friends of my daughter, they were all living with my daughter because she was in an area that was not [affected].”

Babygirl actor Banderas was married to Griffith, 67, from 1996 to 2015. The pair share Stella, 28, and Johnson, 35, has always been close to Banderas. Her father is Don Johnson, whom Griffith was previously married to. Griffith also shares son Alexander Bauer with ex-husband Steven Bauer and and stepson Jesse Johnson with Don, now 75.

“It’s so sad,” Banderas, who lives in Spain, says of the ongoing wildfires in L.A., which he described as “difficult to understand for European people.”

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Thousands of structures have been destroyed by the multiple fires that have broken out in L.A. over the last two-plus weeks, with 27 deaths caused by the still-burning Palisades and Eaton Fires. More than 80,000 people have been displaced by the fires, including a significant number of celebrities who live throughout L.A. County. 

“My daughter was telling me, ‘Oh, Papi, I never experienced winds like this in Los Angeles. It was unbelievable, and it was very difficult to stop. We were seeing embers that were just flying miles and falling into another neighborhood,’ ” Banderas says. “So if you are not looking at the sky entire time, you can find the surprise that your house is just burning from the roof. So all of these things were happening all at the same time. . . It’s very difficult.” 

“I suppose that’s gonna be a whole full investigation, just to see not only what happened, but how to avoid it in the future,” he adds. “But it’s very difficult for European people to understand that a big city like Los Angeles with so much investing, so much money and that something like this can happen, that neighborhoods, complete neighborhoods, they were flattened by fire. It’s weird. It’s just strange.”

Banderas’ commercial with Bosch will air during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, Feb. 9.