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Nicholas Alexander Chavez Talks 'Monsters' and 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'

Burt Reynolds's 1972 centerfold in Cosmopolitan was, simply put, a major moment in pop culture. It was our magazine's—any magazine's—first time featuring a man in that kind of spread, and it cemented Burt's status as one of America's sexiest men. In homage, we're continuing the Cosmo Centerfold series, in which we showcase the hottest celebs of our time. You'll have to pick up an actual Cosmo to see it in the flesh. Enjoy! Sure, playing a convicted murderer on television isn't the most obvious way to put yourself in 'heartthrob' territory, but Nicholas Alexander Chavez's portrayal of Lyle Menendez in Netflix's Monsters got him there—and his role in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer will cement it. When Monsters launched last September, it earned 2.7 billion minutes watched in its first week on the streaming service. The fan cams quickly followed, and one of them, where Nicholas is seen shirtless multiple times in character as Lyle, racked up 6.8 million views on TikTok. He and his costar Cooper Koch became the internet boyfriends of the fall. When I catch him in the spring for this interview, he's still coming down from the whirlwind of it all. He tells me about losing his anonymity overnight, why he didn't consider himself a romantic until recently, and how he and his girlfriend, Victoria Abbott, are protecting their relationship in this era. I see a lot of people doing the double take whenever I'm out to restaurants or that sort of thing. It's very funny when I get shown videos of myself that are taken from one or two football fields away. Always knowing consciously that you're probably being watched is a bit strange. You feel people's eyes on you in a different way. And it happens at odd times. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day to look at some artwork, and I had a parade of people who were kind of following me around the museum, which was a bit funny. Like, there's there's an actual Picasso in that room. I'm doing none of that. I'm smoking American Spirits and I'm hanging out with my friends. And I'm trusting my judgment. This shoot was fun too, because you see yourself in so many different contexts. We did that cowboy-esque look and then we also had the football pads. It's just interesting to see your avatar in so many different fonts. When I have have a finely curated playlist blasting through my speakers. I also feel really confident whenever I'm playing poker. I host games at my house and I have some of my friends over and we just listen to music and we kick back. I also feel a ton of confidence when I'm on set. There's a freedom that comes with knowing that you're behaving as someone who is not you, and that separation gives you the permission to be able to behave in a really uninhibited way. Very. More than anything else, it's consideration. It's the way that you consider the people in your life. And I think you can be romantic in a lot of different relationships because you can consider everyone in your life. Oftentimes, romance comes through in very small details that no one else would pick up on—by taking the time to learn the finer details about a person and what they like and dislike and what makes them comfortable and happy and then having enough forethought to make sure that those are considerations that are kept in mind. Then when you find someone who does that for you, it can be a really rewarding feeling. My girlfriend really likes it when I call her 'honey.' I just try to remember little things like that. Sometimes it's not even something that gets said explicitly outright. I can just tell that I do something and then I can see her eyes light up in a really special way that only I would be able to notice. And then I log that, like, Okay, she likes that. I think it can absolutely be taught, because I don't know that I would have identified as a romantic until very, very recently. But I think that when you meet the right person who brings that out of you, then it can be taught for sure. My girlfriend and I were friends for a very, very long time before we started officially dating. There is probably no such thing as taking it too slow in terms of getting to know someone. And what I found is that the person who you end up seeing romantically truly becomes the most important person in your life. Your conception of family changes as you get older. First, it's Mom and Dad and your brothers and your sisters. And then as you become an adult, you realize, Oh, this person who I see every day and who we wake up with and have breakfast together, this is my family. Really taking the time to get to know who this person is and getting to know their heart and the way that they see the world and allowing them to show who they can be for you in a lot of different contexts is also helpful. My girlfriend has had opportunity after opportunity to show me how much she loves me and smashes it every single time. I'm a very avoidant person, so it really took effort on her part. She may tell you a very different story. She'd probably tell you that she was in the trenches for a long time trying to get it to work out. I was a coldhearted cynic. We were friends for, like, a year and a half. I don't trust most people as far as I can throw them. It takes a long time for me to get to know someone and get to know them well. People are incredibly complex and deep and have so many different pockets of their humanity and of their personality, you can say very quickly whether or not you like a person. But in order for someone to get close to you, it takes so much time. And she dug her heels in. I want to do some kind of adventure. I want to either go on a road trip or I want to book a flight, something that really changes our environment or our scenery. So it'd probably be: pack a bag and then we get in the car, take the top down, we blast some good music that we like. We drive maybe two hours outside of the city. Maybe we find somewhere coastal or somewhere kind of remote. We're both such huge film buffs and we're big foodies. So I'd probably try to find a nice dinner place for us. But really, the best dates can't be planned. It's the kind of thing where you get out of town and then you see what there is to do, and then you let your heart and your creativity lead the way in terms of how the night's gonna play out. You certainly don't want to go on any first date that makes it difficult to talk to each other. I'm always driven crazy by people who think that going to the movies is a good first date. That's insane to me. Right. Because it's like, hopefully I'm interested enough by you that I enjoy talking to you, that you have interesting things to say. To completely shut that out by going and staring at a screen for two hours is definitely a bad first date. In L.A., there's this great beach called Dockweiler. I took a couple first dates there. It's nighttime. It's on the beach. There's a good bonfire going. You bring out the blankets. It requires a little bit of forethought and having your act together. And both of you are in a place that, like, you don't really go all that often. Part of it is making sure the context feels special. But you should also do stuff that you like. I love a good bonfire, and I love being by the water. I think that there's a fine line between considering someone else and then also taking stock in what you enjoy because it's the other person's first opportunity to meet you as well. We're probably each choosing a movie that we want to show the other person or we're watching something new that neither of us have seen before. We get recommendations from friends all the time. We have a rolling watch list. We have a hot tub, so we might go out to the hot tub and hang out and kick it for a little while. I also live with my best friend, and so whenever we're having a romantic time, my best friend will walk in, and then he'll just start singing, 'Just the three of us. We can make it if we try.' My younger brother also just moved in with me, so we're one big happy family. I think it's interesting to see the way that different people have responded to this. It's very one-sided in terms of what you see. Because, of course, you see the people who have no respect for it and they're super willing to just reach out regardless of whether or not they're married or have a fiancé. And so that's really quite crazy. But I think for us, we know that it comes with the territory. I'm an artist first and foremost. It is so foundational and fundamental to who I am as a human being. With that comes attention and sometimes a lot of it, and that can feel quite flattering at times, of course, but that's not the way that day-to-day life works. Day-to-day life works in the sense of, I have to come home, I have scripts to memorize, I'm stressed out about this scene. Where are we going for dinner? Hey, do you mind picking my brother up from the airport? There's a lot of shiny objects, but both of us are so on the same page in terms of what is most valuable to us in our life, and it's the art we make and the family we have. So we protect that pretty viciously. Yeah. And also the most rewarding part of it. Probably to not be careless with it. Styled by Brandon Tan. Grooming by Melissa DeZarate for Oribe.