Paul Feig didn’t mean for his New York pied-à-terre, which he shares with his producer-wife Laurie, to turn out looking “part British, part seventies bordello.” It just happened that way. The couple bought the 32nd-floor Murray Hill condo to be the director’s writing sanctuary and crash pad while in town from Los Angeles to direct episodes of Nurse Jackie and Bored to Death. Then they hired a decorator who didn’t get it. “She was making it old-lady-ish,” says Feig, a Michigan-born Anglophile. “I wanted it to be kind of funky—British but very eclectic.”
Neighbors recommended Adam Orzechowski at Orent Design, who remodeled the bathroom in white subway tile and painted the walls with a metallic plaster. The furniture, which Feig describes as “visions in brown,” is a mishmash of new pieces and antiques. Feig found his thirties French deco bar at Sapho Gallery on Second Avenue to fulfill his fantasy of having a bar like the one in The Graduate and stocked it with Glenmorangie whisky and Plymouth sloe gin. (“It’s a British aristocracy drink. When you go shooting and hunting, I guess you drink sloe gin.”) Some of the décor is even less serious: A cardboard Bob Hope sits on the kitchen counter, and an oversize goofy photo of Feig with the Bridesmaids cast lurks behind the bedroom door. “I don’t know if this apartment is particularly together, but it’s comfortable and open, and that’s what I like about it.”
The apartment’s focal point is a double portrait of Linus the Scottish terrier. “We have another dog, Mary,” says Feig, “but she photographs like an old prospector, so she didn’t get the big wall.” Photo: Francois Dischinger
A leopard rug from Halcyon Days in London guards Feig’s prized liquor station. Photo: Francois Dischinger
