Stavros Halkias Thought He Was Being Pranked when Cast for Oscar-Nominated Film Bugonia

He's everywhere. You can't swing a cat without him popping up. It's amazing. He is in podcasts. He is in comedy specials. He is in really renowned feature films. His stand-up special is called Uncle Stav. Take a look at a clip. I used to make fun of people who overrated the babies in their family, but I'm all in now. Took him to the aquarium. He called every fish a dog. It's like, yup, those are dogs, buddy. Good job. Start barking, Stingray. You're embarrassing my nephew. Relieved because all of a sudden I was like, oh no, maybe I was just matching you in the comedy special. Maybe this is different. I come out in khakis. It just looks horrible. No, you look incredible. Doesn't she look great, guys? This feels surreal. It does? Yes, that I'm in a velour tracksuit with Drew Barrymore hanging out. This is crazy. This is truly insane to me. You're talking to a guy who is Charlie's Angels day of, you know what I mean? The wedding singer absolutely would like triple platinum in my home. For real, yes. That means so much. Okay, you are in, oh my god, I didn't even bring up tires. Right. You're in tires. In the hell. Have you diversified your portfolio? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, okay, we'll go little subject by subject. How did tires come about? That was really lucky. It was just my friend, Shane Gillis, shout out to Shane. So he texted me one time out of the blue. He was like, hey, we're doing this show. It'll be fun. That was the entire pitch. And I was like, that's all I need to hear. I want to work with you guys. I thought it was going on YouTube. I thought it was just going to be an internet release. And then Netflix bought it and then just got so lucky. Your question of how I figured it out, dumb luck. I just kind of like right place at the right time and a show that I thought was just kind of a fun web series with my friends became like the biggest sitcom in the world. I wouldn't believe that if you hadn't hit on so many levels. If it was just this one thing, I might be like, oh, okay. But I just, it's not possible with how many things you have going on. Okay, then you're like, I'm going to do films. And your first film, Begonia, is nominated for Best Picture. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. And. Oh, nice. So there you are with like Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons and that extraordinary filmmaker. Yorgos, he's incredible. Yorgos Lanthimos. Who everything he does gets, you know, really accoladed, nominated. Like, how did that come about? Again, you're not just luck. I got a call from an agent that was like, hey, Yorgos Lanthimos wants to meet with you. And I was like, no, he doesn't. You got, you got that wrong. You just went, he was looking for a different Stavros. He was looking for a different Greek actor. And he hit you up for some reason, because I had never done anything until then. Tyres had just, Tyres season one. So now I'm like, is Yorgos Lanthimos watching Tyres season one? I guess so. He's watching you somewhere. Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't know what happened. He just called me out of the blue. And it was like a prank. It was like, you know, the best actors in the world. And then I'm just like, all right, let's see how it goes. Yeah, that's not an accident. He's looking for you. Okay. So then you're also, I just watched it last night. Tony, the film about Anthony Bourdain. I love the film so much. I loved Anthony Bourdain. And so I was invested in it. Antonio Banderas was so good in it. How did that come about? That one, that I feel like a little more earned. The director actually directed my special also, Matt Johnson. So me and Matt, who he's done a bunch of great stuff. He did the Blackberry movie he did. Which I saw and loved. Yeah. I missed the Blackberry. Bring that back. What do you think? The Drewberry? Bring it back. The Drewberry. The Drewberry. We're good. The Drewberry's good to go. I'll take one point on the back end. That's all I want. That would do a lot. Yeah. But I got very lucky that with Matt, we had worked on some stuff that never kind of went anywhere, like different projects. He had this great idea for a movie. And again, I had done Begonia, where I play this, you know, a small supporting role. But I didn't get to do anything like super funny yet. And so Matt was all comedy all the time. And so he had this idea where I was like, oh my God, it's like a starring role in this big comedy. And it just didn't happen. And so, yes, it would have been very easy to be like, well, I guess, you know, that's a dead end. But just out of the blue, he called me. I was on tour actually. I was about to do the Chicago theater. And he called me and he was like, this movie I'm doing, I think it needs like a bully. And he thought of me immediately. He was like, who who could play a line cook that can absolutely roast a gorgeous 23 year old? And he thought me, he thought I was that family meal that like people in restaurants have, like there's this, you know, natural banter that occurs. I don't know how much was improv or not, but you have to have the people around the table in order to create that. And so you're part of that family. You're part of what makes that work, period. Yeah, it was. That's what it felt like, because all all our kitchen scenes, they were just like, all right, you get the lines or not. What's important is you put out five lobster rolls, you do the oyster. So they really filmed us just a bunch of, you know, soft actors pretending to be like blue collar cooks or whatever. And it was really fun because in the middle of it, I was making these really bad lobster rolls. But we're also having that actual banter that you do at like a blue collar job at like, you know, if you're if you work at a restaurant, I worked at a machine shop. That's what it felt like. It felt like one of those, like, you know, did you ever have like a regular job? I feel like you've been a child since you were out of the womb. I feel like you probably did when I started 11 months. Yeah, I did. I when I like lost everything from, you know, my own choices and just had to. I worked at a coffee house called The Living Room. My boss hated me. He hated me. He called me lamb chop and he'd be like lamb chop. That's not how we do it here. Was he British? You just adding that on for fun? That was his affectation. But I just I knew he wasn't thrilled with my results. So when you say after you lost everything, are you talking about when you were like 13? Yeah, 14 and 15 working there and I couldn't get jobs and I didn't drive and I had I was emancipated. I lived on my own and needed a job. That's nuts. So there was a moment at 14. You were so you're like you had a midlife crisis at 14. Basically, you were like 13. You were living like a divorced guy at 13. Yeah, that's so funny. You had like a one bedroom with no windows. That was my experience. I also worked in a place called Music Plus. It was a video. Not just music folks. They got Music Plus. Exactly. We got videos and extras. That was pretty much all they had. Those are two pluses. I worked there and my boss, Whitney, hated me too. I'm sensing a trend. I know. I suck. Were you a bad employee? I thought I was good. I think we all pull on our experiences. I'm also watching your latest special Uncle Stobb. Are you an actual uncle? I'm an actual uncle. That's why it's Uncle Stobb? That's everything. There's my guy right there. There's my nephew. You're talking about him in the special, obviously. You're like, I'm so proud. There's something funny here. Either way, you're like, I'm Uncle Stobb. I guess I, at 37, am having the crisis you had at 14 where I was like, what do I do? I got to grow up. That's what this special is, is being like, all right, time to grow up a little bit. Showbiz is such a fake. Comedy is so fake. When I was 19, I decided instead of a real job, I wanted to get drunk at seafood restaurants with my friends. That's the job. I did host an open mic at a seafood restaurant where a guy got stabbed with a crab shell. So that has happened to me. Good times. I did start from the very bottom of show business, literally. There were seafood fights breaking out in my shows. Now we're at a Netflix special, which is nice. It's nice to have made it from there. We really love another cool occupational thing that spoke to me is you have this calendar. I do an erotic calendar every year.