At the age of 54, Giorgos Mazonakis died of cardiac arrest, leaving a significant mark on the Greek music scene. Just two months before his death, the singer gave an extensive television interview, which would turn out to be his last.

During the interview, he spoke about the difficult experiences he had gone through over the previous year. His hospitalization at Dromokaiteio in August 2025, his relationship with his family, his professional relationship with his sister Vasso, and an allegation of sexual misconduct against him were among the topics he discussed on the program Tet-a-Tet last July. Despite the difficulties he had faced, Giorgos Mazonakis believed that “God gives you what you can handle.”

Watch his interview

Initially, Giorgos Mazonakis spoke about his hospitalization at Dromokaiteio following an order requested by his family. He said:

“This past year was eventful, I can say. I made sure to take the positive elements that every bad situation can offer. I learned to speak whenever I want to speak, not whenever other people want me to. It’s a tactic I developed over the years. I’m someone who wants to explain a situation through facts and keep my head above it, rather than acting out of anger or frustration. I take a step back.

“I didn’t follow anything they were saying. For many years, being in the public eye terrified me. After that experience, I realized that peace and quiet are better. If someone called me and told me to turn on the television, I would turn over and go back to sleep.”

“Vasso was not my manager; she was my business partner. I always made the decisions myself. That changed many years ago. I’m someone who, in order to make a decision, needs to look at a situation from every angle. We had many conversations before I understood that we could no longer work together. Over the past year, the situation became particularly intense on the family’s side, not mine.

“Things started becoming strange when we had a disagreement over a property. Vasso had power of attorney, but she wasn’t legally protected. Then the whole thing descended into absurdity. Neither one side nor the other. It became chaos, and little by little we had to untangle the knot.”

“To avoid making this into something bigger, I was the family’s name. Every child would help their family financially, just as my family had done in the past. They followed me everywhere and supported me. Today, I see things more gently. I never considered myself to be superior or the only one who mattered. More often, I actually put myself down.”

His relationship with his family

Speaking about what had happened with his family, he made the following clear:

“I believe 100% that I bear some responsibility for what happened with my family. Through all of this, I discovered many things about myself that I wasn’t aware of. A thousand different things that I had adopted as my own even though they weren’t. We have to be able to look at ourselves from the outside.

“I experienced many stressful situations. I never reacted; I had a politeness that could have destroyed me. I would just sit there until things changed on their own. If someone had told me years ago that I would stop speaking to my family, I would have said it had never even crossed my mind. Sometimes I feel like someone will pinch me and I’ll wake up.

“They would come to my house without being invited. They didn’t come to make peace; they came to tell me that what I was saying wasn’t true. At some point, my family began to crumble inside me. I’m a family-oriented person. Blood can turn to water.

“Legally, the matter hasn’t started yet; I will take legal action. The €1 million lawsuit over my involuntary hospitalization still stands. Naturally, as a person, I think about the past alongside the present—we fight to live in the here and now. It has to do with how you manage things.

“People used to tell me not to do business with relatives, but I dismissed it as a cliché. I lost money. Other associates became involved, not just family. I lost all of it—people, money, everything.”

The day he was admitted to Dromokaiteio

Referring to the day he was taken to Dromokaiteio, he revealed:

“I thought things were quite innocent, quite childish. I didn’t lose my trust in people. There was tremendous turmoil in my home; my life was turned upside down. I came back from a walk I had taken with Aritha, the doorbell rang, and two plainclothes police officers appeared. One of them showed me a document and told me I had to go to Dromokaiteio.

“From a young age, I believed I could sense certain things. At that time, I felt strange. I believed things about myself that weren’t even true. One of my sisters was outside waiting for me in her car so she could follow the police car. That was extremely upsetting for me.

“At that moment I was cooking. I ate, took a shower, got into the police car and went to Dromokaiteio. In recent years, I hadn’t been anxious around authority. I talked to the police officers. I was calm, and then I started thinking about what would happen. I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ I started thinking about practical matters in case I had to stay.

“I expected them not to keep me there. There’s something underlying all this that I don’t know about. There are private clinics and public hospitals; I didn’t know what was happening. I’m a shy person, and because of the way I presented myself publicly, some people thought I was arrogant. That was a defense mechanism.

“It wasn’t easy. I was afraid of how people at the clinic would treat me. It was quite difficult, I have to say. I felt fear and betrayal. I became Dromokaiteio’s celebrity attraction; some people would say, ‘Well, we’re doing fine if Mazonakis is here too.’

“What I feared was my career. In general, my family and I had already been estranged for quite some time. What bothered me most was that they had this refrain they used whenever I said anything: ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ They clearly had other things in mind. I believe it was a panic move. I’m still trying to understand it. When you make a move like that, you also have to face the consequences.”

“The move was clear. The public protected me. That was something I never would have believed. Until this situation happened, there were things I didn’t know and didn’t believe. Sometimes the love of relatives can be destructive. None of what they said surprised me; I had understood how they would act.

“Can you use something—someone’s vulnerability—and turn it against them? Why now? I never felt that I was a danger to myself. I may have felt things internally, through my thoughts, through things people had told me. I say that, in the end, life is the struggle of Giorgos against Giorgos.”

“I started losing the ground beneath my feet”

Speaking about how he had reached this point with his family, he said:

“Sometimes people try to influence you. They influenced me against myself. People like creating stories. Everything became prophetic in my life. My family wasn’t sincere when they said they wanted what was best for me; that wasn’t true. I couldn’t believe that someone could be against me. I never turned on the television; I never called a journalist.

“God gives you what you can handle. These are the trials in my life. My faith and my career saved me. I started doing what I did when I was young; nobody ever helped me. What hurts me most—and it shouldn’t—is that someone might say, ‘Is this how he treated his family?’

“Unfortunately, I still care about what people think. I had to undergo emergency surgery and had my gallbladder removed. I knew that everything I had started experiencing would eventually affect me somehow. They told me about my family’s [actions regarding the hospitalization], but at first I didn’t believe them. I started losing the ground beneath my feet. How could the family we had been suddenly be saying such things?

“We were a family with a lot of humor. We weren’t sitting around the family dinner table every Sunday; we were very relaxed. I still haven’t fully realized it. I feel like someone will pinch me and I’ll wake up.

“My father is neutral. Dad always supported Mom. Do you know what love means? I will never stop loving them. Of course I’m hurt and emotionally distant. I always hold on to a hope that will never disappear, because I move forward by choosing what is good. If I see a call from my family on my phone, I won’t answer. Every time I have answered, it’s been the same behavior; nothing has changed.

“Only God forgives, not me. I’m trying to forgive at some point. Various behaviors upset me. I have a very good relationship and attitude toward my colleagues. What I saw, more than anything, was that they maintained a neutral stance. Some said, ‘We don’t know whether they did it.’

“I was upset by people I had helped who said, ‘How does he always manage to patch things up and get over them?’ That really bothered me. How could Antonis Remos say that? That I have one foot in the darkness and one in the light? Of course it would bother me when anyone says whatever they want.

“I think it’s all somewhat mythical. I’m always dealing in paradoxes. I believe that darkness is often daytime. The darkness that people consider darkness is daylight for me. I’m coming out of this whole story much better than I was before.”

The allegation of sexual misconduct by Stefanos Papadopoulos

Referring to the allegation of sexual misconduct made against him by 21-year-old Stefanos Papadopoulos last December, he said:

“I’ll tell you things as they are. The particular singer was chosen by the previous musical director. This was a huge gesture by a businessman toward me. What made me angry was that I had always had a personal rule that nothing about me should ever come out.

“I sat there thinking, ‘What is it that worries you?’ For so long, whenever I wanted to say something, people would tell me, ‘Don’t say it, because it will come back to hurt you since you’re famous.’ I always lived with that fear. I didn’t protect myself in terms of whom I associated with. I’m spontaneous.

“Until now, I never mixed my professional life with my personal life. When I learned that this young man was accusing me of sexual misconduct, I turned my head away. In the past, I would have developed autoimmune problems from the stress. The fact that the allegation is false is a fact.

“I let people draw their own conclusions. A year earlier, this particular businessman had told me that ‘this singer was saying something about #MeToo.’ I had first seen the young man backstage when he wanted a suit to wear for his appearance, and I gave him one myself. He isn’t my type.

“Young people are more cunning than we are. I have taken legal action, and we’ll see what happens. I’m waiting for my lawyer’s advice.”