Kenya Barris Lists Ultra-Modern Encino Mansion Featured in ‘#blackAF’

Few in Tinseltown have their creative hands stirring as many pots as multihyphenate film and television powerhouse Kenya Barris. In just the last few years, his long-running primetime series “Black-ish” ended after eight seasons — the show shockingly won only one of the 27 Emmys for which it was nominated — and two of its spinoffs are still airing. He penned the 2019 film “Shaft” and the 2021 film “Coming 2 America,” and he made his directorial debut with the upcoming ensemble comedy streamer “You People,” which he co-wrote with Jonah Hill.

He also co-produced, with no less than Barak and Michelle Obama, Netflix’s 2021 animated series “We the People,” co-created with Kid Cudi the upcoming adult animated music streaming special “Entergalactic,” and he’s slated to write, direct and produce a “reimagining” of the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” Furthermore, Barris exited his $100 million deal with Netflix last year because he felt the streamer wanted to dull his razor sharp creative output and entered a new deal with Viacom CBS to launch the newly formed BET Studios.

The father of six also has personal issues to attend to; he recently filed for divorce from his anesthesiologist wife, Rania “Rainbow” Edwards-Barris. Married since 1999, the erstwhile couple filed and reconciled twice before, first in 2014 and again in 2019. Barris is, to be sure, very busy.

Yet somehow, the film and television dynamo has found time to buy, furnish and sell several multimillion-dollar homes across L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Having picked up a celeb-pedigreed pad in Toluca Lake last year, he’s now put his Encino mansion, the one used for and easily recognized as the model for the family home in Barris’s short-lived semi-autobiographical Netflix series “#blackAF,” on the market with a price tag of $10.25 million.

Listed with Pam Lumpkin at Compass and described in marketing materials as a “modern entertainer’s estate nestled behind gates and mature foliage,” the asking price is a hefty chunk over the $7.55 million paid for the 9,100-square-foot ultra-modern mansion a bit more than three years ago. Natural materials and careful massing tone down the rigid and boxy geometry of the striking residence, which wraps itself around a central courtyard. Inside, jolts of color here and there animate the voluminous glass-walled interior spaces that are otherwise done in a strict and serene, monochromatic palette of whites and greys.

Highlights a shallow moat that surrounds part of the lower level’s living and entertaining spaces; two muscular steel, wood, and glass staircases; a plush screening room, which showcases bespoke branch-like light fixtures on the walls; a huge, minimalist kitchen that offers a 20-foot-long island and a separate pantry/catering kitchen.

The seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms include a super-deluxe main suite with disappearing walls of glass that peel open to a private terrace that overlooks the pool. The minimalist main bathroom is sheathed in smooth concrete, and a couple of custom-fitted walk-in closets will make the tongues wag of just about any fashionista who craves glass cabinets for storing shoes.

Entire walls of floor-to-ceiling glass slip into the walls to blur the distinction between the open-plan interior spaces to the home’s variety of exterior spaces. In the central courtyard, alongside the mosaic-tiled zero-edge swimming pool and spa, a covered dining terrace includes a built-in barbecue, in-ceiling speakers, and an outdoor television. And discretely located behind the house, a half-court basketball court is next to an expanse of easy-maintenance evergreen faux-turf.

Barris’s new home in Toluca Lake, which cost him $7.25 million, was at one time leased by Justin Beiber and Hailey Barber for a reported $100,000 per month. The Barrises still own an Encino residence purchased in 2017 for almost $3 million — it has since undergone an extensive renovation — as well as a 7,700-square-foot Studio City abode that was acquired in 2020 for $4.6 million and is currently on the market at $7.25 million after it first popped up for sale late last year at just under $7.5. million.