Inside the New Orleans–Inspired LA Home of Designing Women’s Annie Potts
At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s unsurprising that the star of the beloved ’80s and ’90s sitcom Designing Women has an affinity for interior design. After having renovated various homes over the decades, actor Annie Potts was up for the particular task of transforming a property in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles and infusing it with New Orleans–inspired soul.
“I’m a nice Southern girl, so for me to be able to live in the middle of Hollywood and have a pontoon boat and invite people to bring their kids over to fish, it’s like I get to have everything,” Kentucky-raised Potts says while pointing out the unusual features of this hidden gem community. “[Architect] Paul Williams loved this lake and built a bunch of houses here,” she adds about the body of water a stone’s throw from the Warners Bros. lot, where she’s spent countless working hours. Before Potts is called back on set to resume her role as Connie “Meemaw” Tucker on Young Sheldon, she sets aside a few hours to show a visitor around her joyful home while her three dogs dutifully follow.
When Potts first saw the residence during the pandemic, she noticed something: “Oddly enough, it was very much like our New Orleans house,” she says. The relatively long, narrow lot is similar to parcels in the Louisiana city where she’s lived on and off over the years and where her husband, director James Hayman, is an executive producer on the series NCIS: New Orleans. The house needed a gut renovation, so she dove into the project, handling design duties herself and collaborating with contractor Michael Tisdale, the father of actor-singer and home decor enthusiast Ashley Tisdale.
A self-described “Pinterest girl at 2 a.m.,” Potts likens the process of arranging her extensive collections of art, furniture, and treasured objects in the service of making a home to being “a Tetris player.” A loosely interpreted designer’s quote she recalls hearing serves as another pearl of wisdom: “Everything goes with everything—with a few exceptions,” she says. Plus it helps that both her sisters, Elizabeth Potts and Mary Ciccone, are professional decorators. Potts also tapped designers Demann Crawford and Gillian Lefkowitz to serve as sounding boards finessing certain details, such as the sofa that Lefkowitz sourced for the primary bedroom.
She also found ways to incorporate elements of her NOLA life. “What I love the most about New Orleans is that everybody cooks real good, and most people have got the design thing down,” she says. “They love to mix the modern with the old and it just rocks. It’s like eye candy.” Here, Potts opted for walls painted in Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee to create a neutral backdrop for pieces including her many vintage paintings of unknown provenance, the living room divan upholstered in Scalamandré’s classic Le Tigre fabric in a hot pink colorway, and an astonishing portrait rendered in beads of a Mardi Gras figure by an artist she learned about from her friend, actor and art collector CCH Pounder. (“Isn’t he great?” she marvels.) “Annie’s living room was my favorite room to work on,” designer Crawford says. “From her pink chaise lounge to the Chinoiserie rug, [it] shows off the most of her personality.”
Potts boldly mixes goods imbued with personal significance that trigger emotional responses, and she treats spaces as continually evolving. “I move things around all the time,” she confesses. A weathered zinc-topped century-plus-old oversized French florist table has been relocated from house to house and placed both indoors and out. The formidable black stone dining table was gifted by a friend who hosted legendary guests for salon-style meals, and is now capped with armchairs upholstered in green Chinoiserie fabric Potts bought in New Orleans. The large curved orange midcentury sectional sofa that anchors the family room happened to have caught Potts’s eye—and caused her to make a sudden and perhaps questionable U-turn—while she was driving past Sunbeam Vintage in LA’s Highland Park area.
Whimsy plays a pronounced role. “I decided I can do all the bathrooms in birds,” she says, pointing to the avian theme expressed through patterned wallpaper. The concept begins with the Gucci Heron print that emblazons the downstairs powder room, which Potts selected to complement a painted mirror she bought at sidewalk sale for $11 during the 1970s and eventually embellished with a gilded bamboo style frame. Along with heirloom photos and mementos on display, every item has a rich tale that reflects her family's experiences.
Perhaps most tellingly, Potts values material possessions but nothing feels too precious, especially since she and Hayman’s frequent visitors include their two young grandchildren. In this warm, idiosyncratic environment, connections are made organically across generations, styles, and places. Her modest pride shines through too. “I know who I am, and I have the confidence to do it,” Potts says about her design endeavors. “Sometimes I make mistakes—and I just change it out again.”
1/15Annie Potts and dog Nelly sit in the living room of the exuberant, spirited home that she shares in Toluca Lake, California, with her husband, director James Hayman. Potts’s upholsterer in New Orleans claimed the Scalamandré Le Tigre print that she selected for the divan was apparently the last available bolt of the fabric in hot pink specifically. Her mother’s antique pedestal side table stands nearby.
2/15The brass and iron Mantra chandelier in the living room is by Currey and Company.
3/15Interior designer Demann Crawford provided invaluable input as a trusted sounding board. “Annie has never been afraid to take chances,” he observes. “She has an impeccable eye and is a woman who knows what she wants.” Here, Potts sits back in the family room on the roomy orange curved midcentury sectional she picked up at LA’s Sunbeam Vintage. “It’s so important to have a sanctuary,” she states.
4/15Potts originally bought the large Moroccan rug for the living room, but the piece was better suited to the multipurpose family room that’s open to the kitchen. The casual throw pillows double as preferred dog perches. The wicker chair on the right is from IKEA.
Art: Lamar Sorrento5/15The dining room reflects Potts’s proclivity for mixing treasured pieces imbued with personal significance. Her friend, the late writer and humorist Emily Levine, insisted that Potts have the black stone dining table where Levine would host epic salon-like gatherings upon her passing. The vintage landscape painting by Santa Barbara–based artist Ralph Quackenbush was a spontaneous find while Potts was in the small town of Los Alamos for her son’s wedding. “To me, it’s a reflection of the lake and the trees in the water” outside her window, she says. The antique Tibetan cabinets have been in multiple homes. The Sabrina chandelier is by Oly, and the sconces are Farfalle from Visual Comfort. Out of view is Potts’s great-great-grandfather’s wooden highchair.
Art: Anita Rosenberg6/15Potts worked closely with contractor Michael Tisdale to renovate the house and reimagine the layout. Thanks to her design experiences in New Orleans, she was already familiar with both the constraints and opportunities that long, narrow lots present—a characteristic some Toluca Lake–facing properties share. The open-kitchen-family-room area is now conducive to gatherings with family and friends.
7/15In her last Uptown New Orleans house, Potts commissioned a bird-themed mural to complement the delicate wall mirror she bought from “somebody who was selling this on the street” nearly 50 years ago. That in situ work had to remain in Louisiana, but thankfully Gucci’s Heron wallpaper achieved the desired fantastical effect in this powder room. The piano in the living room is reflected in the mirror.
8/15The painting above the bed in the primary bedroom is another compelling tale. Potts physically removed the panel from what was originally a ballroom in a “rundown mansion” in Washington, DC, that friends were in the process of remodeling when she visited. “In 15 minutes I had that off the wall and rolled up in a tube,” even though she knew nothing about the work. She later discovered the image depicted is based on a scene from Picasso’s set and costume design for the production Parade by Ballets Russes in 1917. “Wild, modern stuff,” Potts says.
9/15The primary bedroom seating area upstairs opens to the continuous balcony that overlooks the interior downstairs patio and Toluca Lake. The rug is an eBay find, and the acrylic waterfall table is another online purchase. Gillian Lefkowitz, another LA design pro Potts turned to, sourced the white sofa. Drapery is Kelly Wearstler’s Graffito fabric.
10/15Ever the performance veteran, Potts’s vanity setup includes a mirror with classic backstage lighting on three sides. Window treatments are Graffito fabric by Kelly Wearstler.
11/15Potts’s vast collection of vintage art and accessories extends to careful placement of cherished objects in the primary bathroom.
12/15A cozy guest bedroom that accommodates visitors, who might include her three grown sons and two grandchildren, showcases Potts’s layered approach. The image of John Lennon at the Statue of Liberty in 1974 is by Bob Gruen; works on display throughout the house by noted photographers are an extension of Hayman’s passion for photography.
13/15The zinc-topped antique French florist’s table on the left “is one of the few things that I ever spent money on,” Potts recalls. The Moroccan zellige tile coffee table on the right is from Badia Design, one of her favorite local decor sources, and the side tables are craft projects dating back to her sons’ childhoods.
14/15A vintage neon sign originally from a motel in the Midwest stands at the ready above the pool deck on the terraced property.
15/15Potts appreciates the village-like feeling of Toluca Lake, long a favorite low-key hamlet of entertainment industry pros, thanks to its proximity to multiple studios. Her family routinely enjoys the water view from the deck, and neighbors socialize in the communal outdoor spaces, accessed either by boat or on foot.
