‘You kind of have to be grateful for the big, ugly event’: Milo Ventimiglia reflects on LA wildfires

Milo Ventimiglia feels a strange sense of gratitude for the Los Angeles wildfires, even though his family’s Malibu home was destroyed in the inferno.

Milo Ventimiglia feels an unlikely sense of gratitude for the Los Angeles wildfires.

The Heroes star’s Malibu property was destroyed in the deadly blazes that hit California in early 2025 but he feels that the devastating event is something that was destined to happen.

Milo – who has daughter Ke’ala Coral, 21 months, and son Rock-Anthony, three months, with his wife Jarah Mariano – told Us Weekly: “It’s a huge, messy experience for a lot of people in Los Angeles, but being able to move through it and find gratitude for an experience like that happening, I look at where I am now with my wife and my kids and a new home and a new place, and I’m like, ‘Well, we probably wouldn’t be in this direction had that not happened.’

“So you kind of have to be grateful for the big, ugly event. But it’s tricky and it’s complicated and it’s messy and it’s wonderful. Everybody’s going to experience it differently. So I think the best thing you can ever do is just try to do your best.”

Milo also discussed the importance of remembering the possessions that he and his family lost during the fires.

The 49-year-old star said: “Stuff is stuff. Memories, they’re still there.

“I had this interesting practice after the fires – and this happened from immediately until even yesterday – but every one to two minutes, right after the fires happened, I would remember an object.

“As time went on, it’d be like every five minutes, 10 minutes, a day, two days, two weeks. But that object was always attached to a memory, and I would write down the object to retain or recall the memory. Object is gone. Memory is still there.”

Ventimiglia’s breakthrough role came in Gilmore Girls as Jess Mariano and he confirmed that he will appear in creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s upcoming HBO Max documentary about the TV series that aired from 2000 to 2007.

He said: “I have yet to record my part. I think the world of Amy, and Lauren (Graham, co-star), too.

“I have no idea what we’re going to talk about. It was 26 years ago that I made the show. It’s funny: I’ll have people run up to me and be like, ‘Hey, do you remember that time on Gilmore when you said this?’

“I’m like, ‘That was 26 years ago.’ I’m like, ‘Tell me something about your life from 26 years ago.’ They’re like, ‘I wasn’t born.'”