When Kellan Lutz first asked his now-wife, née Brittany Gonzales, for her phone number, she put him off. “No, I have to pray,” she said through an intermediary, who had emailed Lutz her picture.
“She said in her email, ‘I’m not dating guys right now. I don’t want to date unless it’s my husband,’ ” says the “Twilight” star, 34, who’s now a key cog in the new CBS spinoff series “FBI: Most Wanted.” He was fine with waiting for the heavenly thumbs-up.
“She’s a Christian, I’m a Christian. I have respect for that,” he says. “I never really dated anyone who believes the same thing as me. And I realize that’s where you should start.”
That was four years ago. The Lutzes, who married in 2017, are now expecting their first child, and waiting out the second half of the pregnancy in the middle of a New York winter. Lutz has moved to Williamsburg while he films “FBI: Most Wanted,” his first broadcast network series. He plays Ken Crosby, an Afghan war vet who is part of a quintet called the Fugitive Task Force that’s headed up by another military vet, Jess LaCroix — played by Julian McMahon of “Nip/Tuck” fame.
“He’s compiled this group. They’re able to infiltrate and really go undercover as we track down the bad guys,” Lutz says. Although the production is based at one of Broadway Stages’ studios in Greenpoint, Lutz says the series mostly films on location in the tri-state area. “We go on the run. It’s different for me,” he says. “I’ve never done a long show like this.”
Having a steady schedule was one of the things Lutz and his wife were looking for when he signed on to do the show, but living on the East Coast — or, more specifically, the East River, where their Williamsburg apartment is located — has been rough on the LA-based couple. “New York’s a tough place to live already, [with] the weather conditions,” he says. “We’re trying to navigate this season of life as best we can.”
The Lutzes’ sense of isolation from their families is acute. “My wife and I are trying to stay positive,” he says. “Our due date is in May. So we’ll be back in LA then. We plan to have many kids, so we’re going to have to find a good doctor out here.
“For [Brittany], she’s always wanted to be a mom,” Lutz says. “I’ve never met a woman who just wanted to be a mother so bad. So I’m grateful. She actually lost [a baby] last year due to fibroid issues . . . in her uterus. As a man, I have no idea what that language even means. We actually found this doctor in LA who uses this new procedure to fry the fibroids from the inside, so now we’re pregnant.
“She’s super excited. She’s come alive.”
Lutz’s days as part of the “Twilight” franchise, in which he played vampire Emmett Cullen, were seemingly a lifetime ago — 12 years since the first movie, to be exact — but he has vivid memories of the intrepid mothers (with daughters in tow) who would not only stalk the cast on location in remote parts of Oregon but then also track down their hotel rooms. Lutz says the attention is “a lot to handle if you aren’t anchored, if you don’t have your own reality and your own support system.”
His own greatest challenge came in eluding the paparazzi waiting outside his beachside house in LA. “It was very violating, not being able to leave my own place,” says Lutz, who jumped a 12-foot wall in his backyard to reach an alley that would take him to the beach. “It sucked,” he says.
The “FBI: Most Wanted” gig resulted in a mini-“Twilight” reunion with one of his co-stars from that film — Peter Facinelli, who played Emmett’s father, Dr. Carlisle Cullen. Facinelli plays the brother of a killer in one episode of the show.
“I didn’t realize he was playing the role until I saw his name on the script, so I hit him up,” Lutz says. “He’s been around the block [and he’s] so talented. It was cool having a little reunion. In LA when we hang out, we’ll play poker at his house. We’ll ride our motorcycles together. We’ve always had a good camaraderie since ‘Twilight.’ Him and I were probably the most connected.”