The McCullough Residence from “Little Fires Everywhere”

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I knew I would love Little Fires Everywhere long before it premiered.  One look at the trailer had me drooling!  A confounding mystery at its center, Reese Witherspoon at the helm, a setting that is almost a character, and two of my favorite cuties, Joshua Jackson and Geoff Stults, in lead roles.  What’s not to like?  (Though I have to say I really could have done without seeing Jackson in those tighty-whities in episode 1.  That’s an image I’ll never be able to get rid of!)  The fact that the new Hulu series is lensed in Los Angeles is just the cherry on top!  I was fortuitously given intel on several of its locales late last year, months before its March 18th debut.  So I, of course, did some major LFE stalking while I was in L.A. in January for my dad’s many pre-surgical doctor appointments.  One of the spots I hit up was the massive brick estate belonging to Mark McCullough (Stults) and his wife, Linda (Rosemarie DeWitt).

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Though set in the real-life town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, the McCullough pad can actually be found at 120 South June Street in Hancock Park.  It is just a few blocks away from the series’ central locale, the Richardson residence, an oft-shot dwelling at 511 South Muirfield Road that is most famous for having portrayed the Tate mansion on the 1970s television series Soap.

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The two properties bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, as you can see below – so much so that I am surprised they were both chosen for use on the series.  Shaker Heights is repeatedly noted as being “the first planned community in America” on Little Fires Everywhere (in reality, it’s just one of the first), so I guess it somewhat makes sense that two residences would be similar.  But from what I’ve seen online of the real town, while all the homes are stately and handsome and quite a few are even Tudor in style, they seem to have fairly distinct looks.  So I definitely find the utilization of two such similar spots odd.

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Richardson Mansion Little Fires Everywhere

The McCullough house initially pops up in the third episode of Little Fires Everywhere, titled “Seventy Cents.”  In it, Linda and Mark throw their adoptive daughter, Mirabelle, a first birthday party, which winds up going horribly wrong when (spoiler alert!) her birth mother unexpectedly appears at their door.

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The residence is also featured in episode 4, “The Spider Web,” though as was the case in “Seventy Cents,” we only see a very tight shot of it.

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Even when Linda is hounded by news crews outside of the house in the episode, we aren’t shown much other than the driveway.

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It is a pretty fabulous pad, so it is surprising that we have yet to get a full shot of it.

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In real life, the 1927 residence boasts 6 bedrooms, 8 baths, 2 stories, a whopping 6,177 square feet of living space, 2 fireplaces, a 0.40-acre plot of land, a tennis court, a pool, a hot tub, and a detached 3-car garage with what looks to be an in-law unit above it.

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As shown in the police report detailing the birthday party fiasco, which Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) reads in “The Spider Web,” the McCullough’s house is said to be at 120 Brighton Road, so the property’s real life address number is being utilized on the series.

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I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the home is also being used.

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Mark and Linda McCullough’s house from Little Fires Everywhere is located at 120 South June Street in Hancock ParkMelanie Cave’s (Elizabeth Perkins) home from Truth Be Told is just up the road at 509 North June Street.  And the Richardson residence from Little Fires Everywhere (aka the Tate mansion from Soap) can be found a few streets over at 511 South Muirfield Road.

The “L!fe Happens” House

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While getting my hair blown out at the Pasadena Blo-Out Lounge (one of my very favorite places) a couple of weeks ago, I caught a portion of the 2011 romantic comedy L!fe Happens, which I had never previously heard of.  Thanks to its obvious L.A. locales, the flick piqued my interest.  A rom-com filmed in Los Angeles that I didn’t know about?  How is that possible?  I quickly amended the situation by forcing the Grim Cheaper to watch it on Netflix a few nights later.  And while I didn’t particularly love the movie, I did fall into a bit of lust with the unique Craftsman-style home where BFFs Kim (Krysten Ritter), Deena (Kate Bosworth) and Laura (Rachel Bilson) lived in it.  Having Geoff Stults in a starring role didn’t hurt, either.  This stalker absolutely loves herself some GS!  But I’m getting off track.

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The residence took quite a bit of sleuthing to track down.  While I originally thought that it was most likely located in Echo Park or Silver Lake, after a lot of digging I ended up finding it just off the I-10 freeway near Western Avenue in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles.

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In real life, the home, which was originally built in 1905, boasts four bedrooms, two baths, 2,263 square feet of living space, and a 0.13-acre plot of land.  According to Zillow, it last sold in April 1999 for $150,000, which seems quite a bit low to me.  Maybe it was in very poor shape at the time, though.  It also appears to be undergoing some sort of renovation currently, as well.

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L!fe Happens centers around three friends who live together in what is supposedly Silver Lake.  A one night stand (before which, borrowing a storyline from Friends, Kim and Laura battle each other over the last condom in the house) results in Kim becoming pregnant.  She decides to raise the baby as a single mom, while still living with her friends, and the movie takes off from there.

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On a side-note – L!fe Happens borrowed another storyline from Friends – the “We both do that!” storyline from the Season 1 episode titled “The One with Two Parts: Part 2,” which you can watch below.  But, once again, I’m getting off track.

The house is featured prominently throughout L!fe Happens, although it is never mentioned how Kim (a dog-walker/personal assistant), Deena (a struggling writer) and Laura (who flits from job to job) can afford such an amazeballs residence.

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While I loved the home’s unique exterior (especially the pentagonal roof!) . . .

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. . . what I became most enamored with was its interior . . .

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. . . especially the open stairwell.

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I mean, could it be any more fabulous??  If I lived there, I would so be displaying books and picture frames on each step.  Love, love, love!

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While I originally thought that the interior was a set, after looking through these images, in which my beloved stairwell is visible in the background (comparison screen caps of that scene from the movie are pictured below), I now believe that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming.  Unfortunately, I could not find any photographs with which to verify that, though.  Either way, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!  UPDATE – I just came across this Curbed LA article which features photos of the property and the interior was indeed used in L!fe Happens!

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For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The L!fe Happens house is located at 1802 South Oxford Avenue in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles.