Last year, Architectural Digest toured the North Carolina home of Brooklyn Decker, her husband, tennis star Andy Roddick, and their two children. Inside their onetime rustic mountain retreat (their main residence is reportedly in Austin, Texas), the decor is cozy yet elevated, with plenty of rich wood, luxurious leather, stone, jewel-like green and blue tones, and interesting accents, including a stained-glass window. It is a home with a clearly defined design aesthetic throughout, and the designer who created it is none other than Decker herself.
Knowing that the Grace and Frankie star has an eye for interiors, we wondered if she had an opinion about the homes in the hit Netflix show, which returned with season six on January 15. Unsurprising, she had plenty to say about the decor styles of the main characters, Grace (Jane Fonda), Frankie (Lily Tomlin), Robert (Martin Sheen), Sol (Sam Waterston), and even her television sister Brianna (June Diane Raphael). Below, find out which space on the show she finds to be the most stylish, which one she straight-up copied in her own home, and which she’d change if she had the chance.
Architectural Digest: Do you have a favorite home on Grace and Frankie?
Brooklyn Decker: Yes, my favorite set is Frankie’s studio. It is so meticulously designed and everything is real, even down to the crusty drying paint on the walls. It is beautiful. But because that’s not really a home, I’d say Robert and Sol’s house is probably most in line with my aesthetic. It’s sort of eclectic, it’s a little bit masculine. It’s a little darker. It just has a little bit of funk to it. As a matter of fact, they have these painted encaustic tiles from Granada Tile in their kitchen, and I liked them so much I ended up buying them for my son’s bathroom. So I draw inspiration from that space.
AD: That is so cool! Did you have to ask production where the tiles were from?
BD: Yes, I asked our production designer Devorah Herbert who did the tile, and she sent me the information. But there are things I actually recognize on the set. It’s funny how they source things. They do a really good job. It’s the only set I’ve been on that has real furniture, real plants, real kitchen sinks, real appliances. I feel like it shows onscreen, and that is part of the reason that our show feels so good to watch, because you want to live in these spaces. They bring in a La Cornue stove! They really commit to the design and I appreciate that. I haven’t seen that on a set before.
AD: Aside from the tiles, is there anything else from set you’d like to take into your own home?
BD: There are three things that I love. Robert and Sol’s little dishes on their nightstand have little trinkets in them, and there is this little brass hand statue. It is tiny, probably an inch and a half long. I always play with it when we’re shooting because it has a great weight and it is super tactile and you want to touch it. We all kind of fight over who is going to get that brass hand. It is this fun little memento that we all love. And then in Grace and Frankie’s beach house there’s this whale on the wall. It looks like a vintage sort of wood carving that hangs on two chains. It’s one of the things the characters took with them when they were shipped to a retirement community [in season four]. I don’t know if there’s ever been a line about the whale in the show, but it's just one of those things that stays with the women. The third thing is some really cool hand-painted linen pieces of art in Robert and Sol’s house that are really beautiful. I hope maybe I can just nab that when this thing is done. There’s really a whole checklist of things I want to steal, but we’ll see if I can actually pull it off.
AD: During season five, your character starts helping out at the Say Grace cosmetics company office. Do you think the decor would look different if Mallory were running the show there? What would you change?
BD: I would change all of it. It’s very Brianna. It’s shiny. There’s chrome and polished brass, there’s pink velvet. It’s very bold and flashy. Brianna is a character wearing full leopard suits. It totally matches this like sort of female, very bold, cool, funny, ballsy aesthetic. But Mallory tends to wear ’70s-inspired silhouettes and colors—I wear a lot of mustard and ’70s brown. I think she’d be in sort of like a more midcentury house converted into an office. But the current office perfectly captures Brianna—there are even swan statues and nudes on the walls. I love the boldness.
AD: Season six just came out, but fans will probably be done binge-watching it pretty soon. Can you tell us anything about season seven yet? Will we see any new spaces?
BD: Truth be told, I don’t know anything about season seven because we haven’t seen a script yet. We start next week. But, there is a big event that happens at the end of season six where there is a total power shift with the sisters. So I think there might potentially be a new workplace for Mallory in season seven, depending on what they want to do with the story line—maybe even in another city. And without giving any spoilers for season six, we are going to lose one of the big sets!
