CLOSER TO HOME
The married acting vets enjoy life offscreen just as they did on St. Elsewhere — with style
Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels take Closer through their California abode.
You know them best as Dr. Mark and Ellen Craig, the feistiest couple on the hit ’80s drama St. Elsewhere. And when Bonnie Bartlett, 88, and William Daniels, 90, get restless now, they head elsewhere: from their LA-area home to this northern California getaway.
“The search for it was fun!” Bill tells Closer. “We loved taking weekend trips up here, just to get away, and then we saw this.”
“We call it the English house, because it has a Tudor feel to it,” Bonnie says of the three-bedroom, four-bath place they first spotted in 1984. It boasts a guesthouse cottage and a detached game/media room on its impressive 1.25 acres, but even though it was love at first sight for the couple (who’ve been married for a remarkable 66 years!), it took the former residents’ divorce to make
their dream come true.
“It was a little too much money for us at the time,” Bill admits. “Then the owners wanted to move on with their lives and reduced the price, so we consider ourselves very lucky.”
The home wasn’t all to their liking when they bought it, but Bill — who can be as fussy as the characters he’s played, as detailed in his new memoir, There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others — made it so. With the help of an architect, “We redid the upstairs bedroom, added bay windows in the master bedroom and in the office, and converted a bunch of rooms into the big game room and lifted the ceiling to open it up,” he says. “I had a vision and would say, ‘Tear that out!’ Then Bonnie would say,
‘Are you sure?’ ”
“When he started tearing out walls, I was like, ‘Aaagghh!’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “It took a lot of time, but we weren’t in any hurry because we were living in LA, and were lucky to have that luxury.”
Bonnie put her own stamp on the home’s design in key ways. “Bill has very conservative tastes,” she says. “I recently changed the master bedroom because it was very bland.” So is it fair to say Bill has the “vision” but she gets things done? “That’s always the way it is!” she laughs.
Bonnie also took charge by furnishing the place with their decorator pal, Jean, adding items that complement the light pastel walls. “Everything in this house, Jean and I handpicked together,” she says. “We had so much fun running around flea markets and antique stores!”
All these years later, they still love hosting a “big family Christmas” with sons Michael and Robert, their daughtersin-law and grandkids. Looking around, she says with a sigh, “We’re so comfortable when we’re here.”
“We have two Emmys each, so there’s no
fighting!”
— Bill (with Bonnie, winning
together in 1986)