Words and Interview by IRVIN RIVERA

Hanging out with Gavin Leatherwood is like listening to “The Abbey Road” album of The Beatles while enjoying cups of coffee over endless adventure and travel stories punctuated with occasional silence as you sit around a bonfire on top of a plateau somewhere in the Grand Canyon with all of your friends.

The young actor from Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina knows his way to charm people. He loves connecting with people; consider him a social flirt. But the man exudes layers of deep introspective aura in him. It’s probably his Irish-English-Welch-Spanish-Native American mix or he can just be an old soul wandering around our midst.  There’s high energy, there’s laughter but there’s definitely calm.

Despite his affinity to dark characters the dude is very open and playful. He seems like the adventurous type who can jump and take any challenge thrown at him. He’s that mischievous rebel who loves good trouble.

In this exclusive interview, I sat down with Gavin prior to his photoshoot with Phil Limprasertwong and talked a little bit about his life, Sabrina, his acting idols, music and other wonderful things.  

What’s your story?

I was born in Maui. I grew up in Orange County, California and caught the bug for theatre at a young age. I tried all kinds of different things but theatre was always a thing; acting was always a thing that kept me happy and I just chased that.

I got lost along the way for a while and fell into the high school kind of just playing sports, smoking pot and being a little rebel and running around until I realized that the thing that brought me the most joy was to create and to connect with other people.

So I got back to doing that. I lived in Oregon for sometime and played a lot of music in a barn with my family.

I was happy with creating but I was always searching for something more and it was until I lived in New York that I met this actor in this random apartment in Brooklyn. He told me that he had just booked a role on a TV show and I was like, “What am I doing in New York?”

I was lost and just searching for something; I’m one of the many souls in New York that’s probably doing that. And I knew I had to get back to LA and do this thing and chase this dream.

So I went back and worked in restaurants and struggled for many years and just kept grinding and pushing and holding on to the belief that I was able to do what I love and it’s this—it’s acting. It’s playing.