During awards season, there was a renewed interest in Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes’ relationship. Ryan and Eva have a long-standing policy of not walking red carpets together. They’re also very private about their home life in general. Ahead of the Oscars, there was a lot of “will they/won’t they” speculation about whether or not they’d make an exception, but they did not. Instead, Ryan went with his mom, stepfather, and sister while Eva and their daughters, Esmeralda, nine, and Amada, seven, watched Ryan’s final dress rehearsal for “I’m Just Ken.” After the ceremony, a source explained that they don’t do red carpets because Eva is over that noise and “still sees it as a job.”
While Ryan may have not taken Eva to this year’s Oscars, he took her brother, Carlo Mendez, to the SAG Awards. Carlo is also an actor and has been active in film and television for almost 20 years. He’s currently promoting his new movie, a noir thriller called Demise. During an exclusive interview with E! News, Carlo confirmed just what we all hoped would be true: That Ryan is an awesome person who fits right in with the Mendes family.
“Ryan is an awesome, funny, down-to-earth guy,” Carlo shared. “I cannot say enough about him, and I’m really learning a lot from him. Just an amazing guy.”
After Ryan forever-connected with Eva while making The Place Beyond the Pines in 2011 and met her family, “he immediately fit in,” Carlos said. “He loves the whole Latin lifestyle, the salsa, the Spanish, the Cuban—he loves all that stuff. So, he fit in like a glove.”
Carlo and Eva have another sister, Janet Levy, while their eldest sibling, Juan Carlos Méndez Jr., died in 2016 at the age of 53 after battling throat cancer. Carlo wears a little vial of his big brother’s ashes around his neck to keep him close.
So Ryan getting along with everyone, including Eva’s dad Juan Carlos Méndez and mom Eva Perez Suarez, was no small thing for the family-centric actress, who pressed pause on her movie career to focus on raising their daughters, Esmeralda, 9, and Amada, 7.
While fatherhood isn’t something Carlo is planning on at the moment—”If it happens, it happens”—the 46-year-old is content being the fun uncle to Eva’s kids, as well as his 17 other nieces and nephews.
Uncle Carlo may even be too fun, he acknowledged, but “I just love joking around! It lifts your spirits to make people laugh, smile and just be uplifting and help people believe in themselves.”
I freaking love this! Getting along with your in-laws isn’t always easy, especially when you’re entering into a close-knit family that has its own traditions. I can see how it would be intimidating trying to navigate fitting in with and respectfully assimilating to a new culture. This is not exactly the same thing, but I come from a big yet close Italian-American family (my mom and her cousins all grew up in the same neighborhood). Poor Mr. Rosie had to learn the names of like 29 aunts, uncles, and cousins when he went to a family wedding a few months after we started dating. He also had to use that Catholic school education to charm a few family members, lol. And although he always threatened to get them, he never actually used earplugs when around all of us.
But back to Ryan and the Mendes family! They sound like they would be really fun and the good kind of chaotic to be around. I would kill to be a fly on the wall of one of their big family dinners or get togethers just to hang out, eat good food, dance, etc. I know that there’s zero chance of this ever happening but I would die if Eva or Carlo ever posted a video of Ryan doing the salsa. Please, someone, make this happen.