Three wildfires currently rage across Northern Los Angeles, where more than 10,000 acres in the celebrity-filled Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Santa Monica areas have been ravaged. Since Tuesday morning, the fires have claimed two lives and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, displacing 30,000 residents who have been forced to evacuate during the city’s state of emergency. Given the location of this tragedy, Hollywood, too, has been thrown into turmoil. Filming has been suspended in the area, as have all major awards season events. Residents like Ben Affleck have reportedly evacuated their homes; Reese Witherspoon, who bought a house in the neighborhood in 2023, wrote on her Instagram Story: “Praying for all the fire fighters, first responders and families who are near these fires in L.A.”
Several celebrities have documented the fires’ effect on their lives. Others who have not yet spoken publicly have reportedly lost their homes, including Anna Faris, as well as Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, and reality stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag Pratt.
The locus of the damage is Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood located 20 miles west of Downtown. The area has become a celebrity destination for its central location, as well as its small-town feel. Plus, there’s the relative privacy. “From a shopping perspective, we rarely have paparazzi—unlike on Robertson,” fashion designer Elyse Walker, who has a Pacific Palisades boutique, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “It’s very much under the radar.”
The Oppenheim Group, the real-estate hub central to Netflix’s Selling Sunset, credits some of the area’s popularity to “highly rated public schools” and proximity to the exclusive Riviera Country Club, which is set to host the PGA Tour next month. That makes one of the wildfires’ casualties even more devastating: the conflagration has destroyed Palisades Charter School, a popular filming spot for movies like the 1976 horror classic Carrie, 2003’s Freaky Friday starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, and the Teen Wolf TV series. According to NBC Los Angeles, fires spread throughout the PCHS campus, which has been closed to students and staff, as well as the adjacent Theater Palisades.
Notable celebrity alumni who have attended the school include Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, power producer J.J. Abrams, Emmy winner Katey Segal, and Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am. Sara Foster, an executive producer on Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, wrote on her Instagram Story alongside footage of the wildfires: “Pali High is on fire. An incredible public school that kids from all over come to. I grew up going there. This is unreal.”
A-listers have also historically flocked to the Palisades area for its “gorgeous, unobstructed views of the surrounding Santa Monica mountains” and the Pacific Ocean below, according to Josh Flagg, a real estate broker on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. Per his website, the average price per square foot for properties in the area “rose by 32% to $1,215 over the past year, with a median sales price of $2,385,000.”
And its appeal is not new. When Steven Spielberg purchased a Palisades home once owned by David O. Selznick and Cary Grant, “the history of the house attracted me instinctively,” he told Architectural Digest back in 1989. “It was important for me to know that David Selznick had lived there during the time he produced Gone With the Wind.”
Also top of mind for the Oscar winner? “The view was from Los Angeles International Airport all the way to Malibu. On the left it was flanked by beautiful trees. On the right it was flanked by Will Rogers State Park, which was the most attractive thing about the site,” said Spielberg. “I knew they could never destroy the park view with homes. It was like going to Hawaii and finding the perfect cove.”
Now the area has been demolished by flames, which have crippled the industry as well as destroying homes. FilmLA, the agency that oversees production in Los Angeles, released a statement notifying that the LA County Fire Department has withdrawn all permits issued for filming in the areas of Altadena, La Crescenta, La Canada/Flintridge and unincorporated Pasadena. “Personnel resources ordinarily available to support film production may not be available during the local State of Emergency,” the statement said.
Some of the productions put on pause include Grey’s Anatomy, Hacks, Suits: L.A., NCIS, Loot, Ted, and Happy’s Place, as reported by Variety. Live tapings of programs such as Jimmy Kimmel Live, After Midnight have also been suspended as the fires rage on.
Nominations for the SAG Awards, a key precursor event to the Oscars, were intended to be announced live from Los Angeles by Cooper Koch and Joey King on Wednesday morning, but instead got delivered via press release as a safety measure. Other awards season events have since been thrown into flux, including the AFI Awards, BAFTA Tea Party, and the Critics Choice Awards—which were set to commence just miles from the Pacific Palisades on Sunday and air live on E! The events have been canceled and the show has been postponed, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with a new date expected imminently.
Additionally, premieres across Los Angeles have been delayed or cancelled. Jennifer Lopez’s sports drama Unstoppable, Julia Garner’s horror film Wolf Man, and Pamela Anderson’s SAG-nominated The Last Showgirl are among the debuts that have been impacted.
This is a developing news story.
