Hollywood has a penchant for recycling stories. “She’s All That,” “Rebecca,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Firestarter,” “Perry Mason,” “Overboard” and “Death Wish” have all gotten the remake/reboot treatment in recent years. And that’s just to name a few! The same can also be said for locations, with many SoCal locales being reused repeatedly onscreen in myriad productions. Case in point – Hummingbird Nest Ranch, a sprawling Spanish-style compound nestled north of the 118 Freeway in the Simi Valley town of Santa Susana that has been featured in hundreds upon hundreds of movies and television shows throughout the years. So prolific is the site, in fact, that it has played William Devane’s small-screen home not once but twice, most recently in Freevee’s new “Bosch” spinoff, “Bosch: Legacy.”
Situated at the end of a mile-long driveway on a colossal 123-acre lot at 2940 Kuehner Dr., the locale is so massive and grand, it truly has to be seen to be believed! Completed in 2004, the property was the brainchild of billionaire Metro Networks founder David Saperstein and his second wife, Suzanne, who purchased what was then a “run-down ranch” with a small 1920s-era house in 2000. The Sapersteins had much bigger things in mind for the site, though. They commissioned architect Richardson Robertson III (who also designed their Holmby Hills estate) to build a luxurious hacienda on the grounds to serve as a weekend retreat for the couple and, as the Los Angeles Times reports, “a safe, quiet place for their five children and four grandchildren to spend time together.”
Boasting eight bedrooms and at least as many baths with no detail overlooked, Robertson’s creation is truly fit for a king – or a billionaire, as the case may be.
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads As the Ventura County Star details, “The air inside the 14,800-square-foot villa is cool, with thick walls and dark, Old World décor that includes antique wooden doors, black metalwork, hand-painted tiles and furnishings that create a sense of having walked into a house that belongs in a bygone age. So strong is the desire to preserve that feeling that no switches are visible for the hanging wrought-iron lights. The switches instead are contained behind wooden panels around the house.”
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads The living spaces, each seemingly more grandiose than the last, are exquisitely outfitted with arched windows and doors, ornate chandeliers and ceilings lined with hand-hewn beams that stand 13 feet above the herringbone Saltillo tile flooring below. Palatial through and through, the dwelling was built on a scale not typically seen in private homes.
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads Even the hallways are spectacular!
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads As are the bathrooms!
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads Suzanne, an avid horsewoman, fashioned the surrounding grounds into a world-class equestrian center with three riding arenas, 15 guest and staff houses (yes, 15!), a man-made lake and a 22,000-square-foot barn complete with a staff kitchen and tack room. And thanks to three onsite wells and a solar panel field, the site generates its own water and power! As David told the Los Angeles Times in 2004, “Unlike a hospital or a school, a facility like Hummingbird Ranch is not essential, so it shouldn’t use up everyone’s resources.”
Other luxe amenities include a helipad, parking for 400 cars, a large swimming pool and spa, commercial laundry facilities and a gasoline pump. The Ventura County Star deemed the place “a self-contained village” and that is not hyperbole.
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads The Sapersteins chose to leave the original 1920s ranch house intact to be utilized as an additional guest home. As such, it was restored to perfection. Surrounded by olive and eucalyptus groves and encased in picturesque whitewashed brick, the space, now known as Sitting Bull, is charming and intimate.
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads Following 19 years of marriage, the Sapersteins’ bliss came to an abrupt end when, as W Magazine detailed in a piece about the Swedish born Suzanne, “One day in 2005, as she was flying to Europe on the family’s Gulfstream IV, the plane made a stopover in Texas, where she was served with divorce papers. David, it turned out, was dumping her for the family nanny, Hillevi Svensson, who was also tall, blond and Swedish—but only 32. (Alimony laws are more restrictive in Texas, where the Sapersteins had a home; Suzanne later counter-filed in California.)” Ooof!
The ranch subsequently hit the market two years later with a whopping $75 million price tag, though there were no takers. So David switched gears and decided to transform the sprawling site into a resort/conference center. The city of Simi Valley gave his plans the go-ahead, but for whatever reason, by the time the permits were in place in 2014, Saperstein had changed gears once again and relisted the property – this time for $49.5 million. It eventually sold the following December for $33 million.
In the interim, as the ranch sat in limbo, David began leasing it out as a special events venue. Numerous celebrities have since tied the knot on the premises, including Kaley Cuoco and Ryan Sweeting, Nazanin Mandi and Miguel Pimentel, and Morgan Stewart and Brendan Fitzpatrick. “Vanderpump Rules” star Scheana Marie (donning a crop-top midriff-baring gown) also married her first husband, Michael Shay, at Hummingbird Nest in 2014. The nuptials were famously recorded and aired during the popular reality series’ third season.
Thanks to its immense versatility, massive size and location within the Thirty Mile Zone, the ranch has also become an extremely popular filming location, portraying everything from an exclusive resort to a rehab facility to a medical clinic onscreen.
And, in a case of art imitating life, it is currently playing the private home of a billionaire on “Bosch: Legacy.”
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads It is there that Devane’s gold/steel/aviation tycoon character Whitney Vance lives on the Freevee series. In the show’s premiere episode, titled “The Wrong Side of Goodbye,” the billionaire summons LAPD-detective-turned-private-eye Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver) to the estate and asks him to track down an old girlfriend and a possible heir to his vast fortune.
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Image Credit: Pricey Pads The case serves as the crux of the season and, as such, both the interior and exterior of Hummingbird Nest are featured prominently in several episodes.
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television Shooting “Bosch: Legacy” on the premises must have felt like coming full circle for Devane because, in a fun twist, back in the ’80s, the actor’s Gregory Sumner character called Sitting Bull home on the popular nighttime soap “Knots Landing!” While the property was regularly featured, unfortunately the show isn’t available to stream anywhere, hence the lackluster screen shot above.
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Image Credit: CBS Television Hummingbird Nest’s film and television resume is far too extensive to fully chronicle here, but a few of the highlights include appearing as the rehab center Adrianna Tate-Duncan (Jessica Lowndes) checks into in the season one episode of “90210” titled “There’s No Place Like Homecoming.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and the girls dine there during Carrie’s non-honeymoon in 2008’s “Sex and the City: The Movie.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television The complex plays the exclusive $800-a-night Calistoga Canyon Resort & Spa, where the CBI team investigates a murder in the season one episode of “The Mentalist” titled “Crimson Casanova.”
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Image Credit: Paramount/CBS Media Ventures Paloma Reynosa (Jaqueline Obradors) calls the place home – and brings a kidnapped Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) there – in the season seven finale of “NCIS” titled “Rule Fifty-One.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures The estate pops up as the Amarillo, Texas, home of Larsen McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton) and his son, Travis (Haley Joel Osment), in the 2015 “Entourage” movie.
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television It’s the clinic of Dr. Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield), where Detectives Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) and Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) investigate the murder of a patient in the season two episode of “True Detective” titled “Night Finds You.”
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Image Credit: Paramount Pictures Studios Mitchell (Andy Garcia) calls Sitting Bull home – and romances Diane (Diane Keaton) there – in the 2018 comedy “Book Club.”
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Image Credit: Amazon Studios The property plays the Chatsworth ranch belonging to Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) in the 2021 Amazon biopic “Being the Ricardos.”
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Image Credit: Apple TV+ And Hummingbird Nest also recently popped up as the home of Jean-Pierre Voland (Oliver Martinez) in the seventh episode of the Apple TV+ series “Loot,” titled “French Connection.”