Inside Karen Gillan's Cozy California Cottage

Hello AD, Karen Gillan here.

Welcome to my home, come inside.

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We are in the of-yay, or is it the foyer?

I feel like in the UK we say fo-yay,

so I'm gonna go with that.

This is the fo-yay.

This is the staircase that I like to sort of wonder down

in a very regal fashion, like this,

like welcome to my home.

These are pictures that were taken by

the actor, Chris Lowell.

Actually one of these bums is my husband.

You have to guess which one.

Which bum would I go for?

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So we are in the living room.

And this is maybe one of my favorite rooms in the house.

I love it so much.

The sort of brief that we gave our designers

was we really want to entertain here.

We want to play lots of games and drink some alcohol,

which leads me nicely to the bar.

Which I'm so worried about showing you

because of how empty everything is.

We just have a lot of friends over,

and they just immediately go here and help themselves.

And yeah, everything here is scotch

because scotch.

For me personally, I like old things.

That's why I bought such an old house

that's from the thirties.

Pierce and Ward were amazing because first of all,

I just love their style already.

So that's why we knew we wanted to work with them.

These were couches that I, well actually

I had bought one of these couches.

We decided to reupholster them and buy another one

so we could have two.

And now they look really cool and kind of a little bit older

than they did before.

And they just kind of like don't stick out too much

and just blend into the room really nicely.

This is the piano.

This is a Steinway piano, which I am so excited about

because if you don't know anything about pianos,

Steinways are where it's at.

And it gets used a lot, like people will drink the scotch

and then come over and sing by the piano.

It's kind of like a party from the 1940s or something.

Do you want me to play a song?

I'm nervous.

I'm gonna put the soft pedal on,

so it doesn't burn your ears off.

[piano playing]

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So this is the dining room.

Here's where we dine.

And we will entertain friends, guests.

And they look at these art pieces.

And then against this wall paper as well.

And it's different on the ceiling,

like a chaotic wall paper party in the best way.

Then we have this nice table.

And these chairs, these chairs remind me

of my grandmother's chairs in Scotland.

Actually that's probably how I would describe this house,

an older Scottish person's house.

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So this is my office.

This is my little cave.

I love it so much in here.

It's fun, it's filled with fun things that I like.

Like this, this guy,

which is fun because you can like, you know,

take it apart.

Look, you can see right into the body.

Funny story about this wallpaper.

I loved the wallpaper so much at a glance

because it like looks incredible.

Then I suddenly realized when I looked closer

that it's fox hunting, and I'm very against fox hunting.

So I now have like a wildly offensive wallpaper

that I have to stare at every day.

These are all my little trinkets and things.

Scary dolls from a short film

that I made called The Hoarding.

Aw, this is like a, I believe, the first or the last slate

from the film that I directed, A Voracious Beginning,

which was called Tupperware Party until Tupperware Party

heard about the movie and the content of the movie

and said, we want nothing to do with you,

which was understandable.

Oh, this is a wee Nebula that someone made for me

and gave it to me at a convention.

Some people are so creative with the things that they make,

and I love to keep them because I'm like, oh,

you put so much time and effort into this.

And so it takes pride of place in my office.

Whoever gave this to me, thank you, thank you, thank you.

This is ax from a short film that I made

called Conventional where I was an actress

on the horror movie Convention Circuit

and then get killed by a fan.

Don't get any ideas.

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I love this kitchen so much.

I love it, I wish that I was a person that cooked more,

but I am in here a lot, just not cooking.

We put a new island in.

We actually painted the floors as well.

The walls are amazing.

So these were all just like plain plaster.

I don't know what they were made of,

but they just looked like, you know, a boring wall.

So we put in all of this wood,

and it just gives it almost maybe

like farmhouse-y feel, cozy and wholesome.

What else can I show you in this room?

These are fun, tassels.

Who doesn't love a tassel?

Everything thinks that this is a swear jar,

but it's not.

It would be far more filled with it was a swear jar.

And also these are fun.

I like have them in these little jam jars.

There's something nice about that.

I think my mum used to drink out of these things

when she was a kid back in school,

and so they're kind of nice and sentimental about that.

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Welcome to the powder room.

This is such a cute little room.

The reason it's amazing though is because of something

you can't see right now because it's right in the corner,

but it is the coolest light ever.

This is a custom mirror because

this is a little bit of an awkward space.

It's a wee skinny space.

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This is the TV room, or the den.

We have a giant sofa in here

so that we can have lots of people over to watch things.

This couch we had before we did the house up,

but we recovered it in this amazing fabric

that's such a nice color

and apparently red wine proof.

We watch a lot of films, and actually, you know,

I'm an actor, a lot of my friends are performers,

and so we will gather to watch each other's stuff

to support each other.

This is my Monopoly board art piece

that was made by my dad, John Gillan.

So basically when he was a kid, he decided that he wanted

to recreate, I don't know why,

but he wanted to recreate an entire Monopoly set.

I thought that that was the coolest thing.

I was like, oh, it would be good to display that

in some way.

So I asked him to turn it into an art piece for me.

I gave him the note that I think it'd be really cool

if it was like a freeze frame of somebody playing.

I think it's really cool.

Well done, John Gillan.

It looks good.

Ah, I have something else to show you.

This little bird is from Aaron Paul's house.

And I went to that house, and I was starstruck by that house

because I had watched the AD video.

I had to be like, oh, where's the bathroom?

I know exactly where the bathroom is.

Anyway, he gave me this because apparently

everybody who goes to the bar in that house

gets one of these, and so I have a little memento

from my favorite AD video.

How cool is that?

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This is the primary bedroom,

the coolest bed I think I've ever seen in my life.

We made it custom for the room.

I think that it was a little bit tricky

having this window here with a kind of full headboard.

I think that it definitely blocked a fair amount

of the light, and so we came up with the solution

to kind of have this shaped bed,

and it just looks really cool.

This used to be one giant room,

and there used to be like a seating area over that way.

I really wanted more wardrobe space

for my clothes and stuff, so we decided to build this wall

over here so that we could use the rest of the bedroom

for wardrobe space, and I actually killed two birds

with one stone because having a TV in the bedroom

is really bad for you, but an absolute must for me.

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That was supposed to be Tom Cruise

in that film where he slides in.

Anyway, so this is the wardrobe.

This is where all the clothes live.

I really love having a dedicated space

to have all of your stuff because I feel like

when it's fully in the bedroom,

it's just not good mentally like seeing all that stuff.

I think it's nice to have it shut away.

There's more books in here, none of which are mine.

Apart from this one actually, this book is mine,

Alice in Wonderland, which actually is probably

another inspiration for this house.

I love Alice in Wonderland, favorite Disney movie.

Always has been, always will be.

If you pan down, you will recognize this floor.

So this is, we decided to repeat the floor

from the kitchen, just to kind of like tie it all in.

We really liked the idea of certain features

appearing again somewhere else in the house

that's maybe unexpected.

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So this is the primary bathroom.

Ah, I love this room so much

because there's a bathtub in it, love the bathtub.

Also I got to have this little station

that's dedicated to doing makeup and stuff,

which is just such a dream.

And then also we did this floor,

which is really nice.

So this is the shower.

It's huge, it's massive, which is lovely.

And then this, ah, this is the best place in the world.

Okay, the oils, the salts, and I love this as well.

This is just all really cool.

I think these are from Italy.

There's one of these in the shower, and it broke.

And it was an ordeal to get that replaced

because I believe it was maybe one of a kind

or at least it was all the way from Italy.

So that was a little bit tricky, but it's worth it

because it looks so good.

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So we are in the spare bedroom.

I love this room.

I feel like I've said that about

literally every room so far,

but this one is the one that I really, really love.

I think that the colors are really beautiful.

These are fun, and then like these curtains match the bed.

Oh yeah, this is a tassel, a tassel-y house.

There's lots of tassels.

There's a really interesting blue on the ceiling

that you wouldn't necessarily think

to put with this green on the walls,

yet it looks like it should go together.

Oh, there's something over there.

This is a Highland cow.

This is what cows look like in Scotland.

And so it was really nice just to have a picture of one

to make me feel like I'm there.

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So this is the back garden.

It's lovely out here.

We have a wee pool, it's a small pool.

Someone's called it a dipping pool.

It's fun because there's a sort of jacuzzi here,

and then what you can do is kind of like

throw yourself off the side and into the cold pool,

and you're sort of doing like a cold plunge,

and then you can get back into the nice warm one.

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We will do a fair amount of entertaining out there.

I've thrown a few parties.

We set up a little bar by the barbecue,

and then maybe a taco truck in the driveway or something,

and then just have all of our friends over.

And it's really nice.

I've also had a dinner party out here.

I rent the tables.

It's nice in Los Angeles to be able to eat outside.

What a thrill.

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Well AD, it has been a pleasure, never a chore.

Thank you so much for joining me on this tour of my home.

I hope you had a good time.

I had a good one, but now you've got to go, so goodbye.

Oh, you can still see me, cool, right.

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