Stars in His Eyes

He’s one of the world’s top interior designers and cuts a sartorial figure in a reality TV show. London-born Martyn Lawrence Bullard tells Leanne Mirandilla about attaining celebrity status—and dealing with celebrity drama

t’s only interior designer and television personality Martyn Lawrence Bullard’s first day in Hong Kong and he’s already embroiled in a celebrity drama despite being an ocean away from Hollywood. He sweeps up to our table at Café Gray Deluxe, having just taken a call from his Los Angeles office. A celebrity client, Khloé Kardashian, had been followed to his office by a pack of paparazzi baying for a comment about Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out. Unable to leave via the main entrance, the intrepid Kardashian tried to escape through a bathroom window—only to get stuck. The call Bullard had received was from the local fire station seeking permission to break his client out of the window.

London-born Bullard, who is currently working on the Los Angeles home Kardashian bought from Justin Bieber earlier this year, is unruffled by the incident. Considering that he counts Elton John, Kid Rock, Felicity Huffman and the Olsen twins among his clientele, and that he’s one of the stars of the reality TV show Million Dollar Decorators, such dramas must be old hat for him.

Bullard has a long association with celebrities—he got his start in interior design with show-business clients, an impressive feat, given that interior design wasn’t the career he’d imagined for himself. Bullard had initially travelled to Hollywood as an aspiring actor. After landing a part in the 1998 film I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, he befriended one of the producers, and invited the executive and his girlfriend over for dinner one night. The producer was so impressed with Bullard’s home decor that he asked him to design his offices.

“I did it for fun and because I thought I’d get another movie,” Bullard recalls. “But