Kobe Paras talks about why he wants to take a step back from the life he’s known since he was a kid and how his tattoos helped him get through some tough times
This is an excerpt from the MEGA Man July 2023 cover story.
The sporadic drizzling seems to threaten the tiny light coming from the dark clouds coloring the sky this early Friday morning. Everyone on board today’s location, a baronial yacht docked in a Manila port, is in a push-and-pull moment: should we set sail and go against the rising tide now or wait for everything to calm down? We chose the latter. In hindsight, it seemed like an augury of the story we are about to hear from the man of the hour.
Kobe Paras, 25, arrives at the set clad in a sleeveless shirt, a pair of board shorts, and slides. He is by his lonesome. No managers. No posse. No assistants. He used to have an assistant, he says, when he was still managed by one of the major networks in the country. His parents, former basketball superstar Benjie Paras and former actress Jackie Forster, are his managers now.
“That’s not me,” he tells MEGA Man when we ask why he doesn’t have companions. These days, he likes to do many things by himself, without anyone telling him what to do, what to say, or what to post on his social media accounts. Being a public figure—through no fault of anyone, he insists—Paras lived his life following a career path that mostly people around told him he was born to traverse. But when he’s left alone with his thoughts, he knows there are less-taken paths he could take.
“You know, growing up, I was even told not to leave the house wearing slippers or sando,” he recalls. He’s wearing all those now, we share the barefaced fact. “I know,” he laughs, adding that as a kid, he wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers, and growing up, he was always reminded not to post anything when he was at parties. “Now, it’s different. I’m in my own world.”
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It’s not a game
Since the moment he learned how to hold a ball, Kobe’s life has followed a similar pattern: wake up, go to school, play basketball, go home, repeat.
But there was a time when the idea of becoming something else other than an athlete presented itself. As a kid, he wanted to become a chef. “I eat a lot, I mean, I’m a big boy,” says the six-foot-six athlete. “Cooking gave me a lot of joy. My dad knows I wanted to go to culinary school, but you know, plans changed.” He was around nine years old when he almost burned the house down and cut his fingers during an attempt at culinary arts. When everyone else would be sleeping, the little Kobe would scour the fridge to make a steak sandwich—he would dice up the beef slices left inside the fridge, sauté some bell peppers and garlic, stuff them in a sandwich and add cheese.
“I just watched my [paternal] grandma growing up,” he says, with obvious happiness in his voice. “She used to cook for us every day, and she made the best sinangag rice and corned beef. And she used to make this monggo soup that’s different from the others I’ve tasted.” The schools he attended also had culinary classes, so he learned how to cook Filipino food, like sinigang and adobo. But deep inside, he has always known that this interest in food would have to take a back seat and make way for that one path he was “born to do.” Besides, basketball was always fun for him.
“I knew I’d have a future with basketball,” he says about not pursuing anything else seriously. “I realized that I was also better at it. It just made a lot of sense.” Being the son of Benjie, it goes without saying, informed his decision. The knack for modeling though, as seen in our photo shoot, is something he got from his mother, he admits.
The attention he and his older brother, actor Andrei Paras received as children was unlike any other. It can be remembered that Benjie and Jackie went their separate ways when Kobe was still a toddler. They made headlines. Jackie went to Europe to study and eventually lived there. All is well now, Kobe says.
While he’s supposed to be used to all the prying eyes, he has never really outgrown it. “I was very shy and I was very awkward as a kid,” he explains. He’s definitely no longer awkward now, save for the times he had to crouch a little bit to fit into the nooks of this otherwise sizable yacht. He’s still shy, though. “I was very insecure—about myself, about how I look, about my body. If I was too skinny, if I was too big, if I was too tall.”
The topic brought us to his full-sleeve tattoos and those on his legs and the rest of his body. If anyone wanted to have a tiny peek into this man’s inner sentiments, his tattoos could be a good start. A lot of them have something to do with his Filipino roots. Then, there’s one about living in Los Angeles. Others are about his dogs. And another one about his grandmother, who passed away in 2020.
“The tattoos make me feel a little more comfortable with my skin,” he says, looking at his bare arms while saying these words. We realized, too, that when he speaks, he usually looks at the window or the floor. “It sounds funny, but they make me feel less insecure.” Perhaps it’s his way of trying to fight the questioning and curious onlookers: just look at his tattoos so they don’t have to really look at him.
The shyness somehow dissipated when he moved to Los Angeles at 14 years old to start taking his career more seriously. “I became more vocal, like I learned how to answer back, but not in a disrespectful way,” he recalls. It was also where he realized how much he loved the freedom of not being under a microscope. Apart from his last name, Kobe was also one of the few Filipino basketball players who moved their careers abroad in the hopes of making it in the bigger arena. Every step he made for his career made the news. “I mean, it’s toxic there, as well,” he says. “But here, whatever move you make—it doesn’t matter if it’s small moves or big moves—you’re gonna be judged and you’re gonna be looked at. People are always going to be talking about the decisions you make and the stuff you do.”
But living abroad came with other harsh consequences. Being an athlete is difficult in itself, he says, with their extremely strict diets and workout routines: “A lot of times, you don’t want to get up, but it’s just forcing yourself and telling yourself that in the end it’s gonna be worth it.”
Add loneliness to that equation and the world can begin to dim day after day. In college, when he was on his way to becoming a pro, he felt so hollow that he needed to call his mother, whom he had not seen or spoken to for more than a decade at the time.
“I felt so lost that I dropped out of college,” he recalls. “I didn’t tell my dad. I didn’t tell anyone. “I felt so depressed and for some reason, I just wanted the love of my mom. I just wanted to talk to my mom. I got her number from her friend, and I called her right away. She couldn’t believe it was me. It felt good, it felt like it was a long overdue thing to reunite. That was the biggest decision I’ve made in my life. When I reached out to her and forgave her, my life got significantly better. It used to be all dark clouds, and I kept waiting for rain. There were days when I’d just cry. When I reunited with my mom, it was all sunshine, all happy. I felt at peace. Now, we’re very close.”
Read more about Kobe Paras’ challenges and the comfort he found in his tattoos in MEGA Man’s July 2023 issue, now available on Readly, Magzter, Press Reader and Zinio.
Photography ANDREI SULEIK assisted by CHRISTIAN BULDA
Creative Direction ANDREW ENCAPAS
Art Direction NICOLE ALMERO and ANDREW ENCAPAS
Fashion Direction RYUJI SHIOMITSU
Grooming PAUL NEBRES
Styling MIGUEL QUILANG and BEA GUERRERO
Sittings Editors DONG RONQUILLO and BAM ABELLON
Video Production REGINA ACERON
Videography OMAR VILLANUEVA
Shoot Coordination KZ FRANCISCO
Shot on location REALSHIP YACHTS
Special thanks to SAM VERZOSA and REALSHIP YACHTS
