Chet Hanks, the 35-year-old son of world famous actor Tom Hanks, has revealed that he is living out of a trailer park amid a major change in his life circumstances.
Real name Chester Marlon Hanks, Chet has faced his own serious struggles over the year as part of his battle with addiction, while also attempting to escape the shadow of his extremely famous dad.
But just like his Forrest Gump playing father, Chet has made his own contributions to American society in recent years, in viral videos where he shares his eerily accurate Jamaican patois accent on social media, or even coining a phrase that had its own cultural moment.
That is, of course, Chet's invention of the term 'White Boy Summer' in his song of the same name. But during a recent Jimmy Fallon interview, Chet revealed how his pursuit of a music career had landed him in a Tennessee trailer park.
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“You didn’t tell me that you were gonna move to an RV park,” Fallon remarked to Chet on an episode of his talk show that aired last week.
The actor and singer, who is starring in the upcoming second season of Netflix's Running Point after turning his life around in recent years, is also trying to launch a new Country band, Something Out West.
But unlike his uber-successful father, Chet still has some way to grind before he can just set himself up in any city he likes. “I didn’t want to get an apartment,” Chet explained to Fallon, “Because I literally just got a condo in LA and I furnished it.
“I didn't want to do that again and I didn't want to furnish it. So I was, like, staying in Airbnbs and hotels and that gets really old because I just like having my own space."
So, rather than living at his parents' $26 million mansion on California's Pacific Palisades, Chet will be living somewhat more authentically on the outskirts of Nashville in an RV.
Instead of finding this depressing, Chet shared how he'd been inspired to live life on the looser side after a recent road trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea in California, where he had stayed in an Airstream.
"I really loved it," he told the talk show host. "I was like, man, I want one of these, I want to get one of these. So I did. I got a trailer."
So that he can pursue his dream, Chet is now rocking out in a Jayco Eagle, a slight downgrade from the Airstream as he doesn't feel like he's 'there yet'. Although, he shared that he's 'really happy' with his set up.
Chet shared: "[It has] everything I need. I got my kitchen. I got, you know, a walk-in shower. That's a big deal with trailers, if it's a walk-in shower, because sometimes they combine the toilet and shower. It's called a wet bath.”
Despite how most people perceive trailer parks as 'sketchy', Chet shared that he's 'probably, like, the youngest person in the trailer park by like 30 or 40 years. He added: "It's not what you think, you know?
"You think, oh, you're gonna live in a trailer park. It might be a little sketchy. It might be a little dangerous. It's all just, like retirees, you know? Great people.”
And Chet even manages to have the same routine as the rest of us, despite now living as a new kind of rugged outdoorsman. “I do have a campfire outside of it. I have a fire pit and I have used it," he shared.
“But most of the time, I just do exactly what I do at home, which is just stay inside and lay in bed and watch Netflix and things like that.”
William Morgan