Actor Walton Goggins and his wife, writer-director Nadia Conners, have made a big change. They left their home in Los Angeles and moved to the Hudson Valley in New York. “We weren’t running away from Los Angeles.
We were running toward something,” Goggins says. He is known for playing villains and antiheroes in shows like HBO’s “The White Lotus.”
The couple had visited the Hudson Valley for years. They rented homes and looked at real estate listings.
But it was the COVID pandemic that finally made them move in 2021. “The pandemic opened windows of self-perception and possibility. It was an opportunity to do something different,” Goggins explains.
Conners agrees. “We thought about this decision for years, but the pandemic was the real reckoning. The idea of moving suddenly seemed less far-fetched,” she says.
The couple fell in love with a specific house. It was built in the 1920s in the style of a Scottish hunting lodge. “I have an affinity for that time period, and when I saw the listing, I became obsessed,” Goggins recalls.
However, the house needed a lot of work. “When we got here, we realized that the house hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. Every system, every fixture, faucet, and fireplace was ready to fail or had already failed.
But it was magic,” Goggins remembers.
Running toward a new life
The couple brought in a friend to help with the interior design.
The designer reconfigured the house to make it work better for modern life. He expanded the kitchen, made a new primary suite, and turned three old staff bedrooms into Goggins’s home office. A team of artisans, technicians, and craftspeople worked to restore the house.
They preserved the old beams, floorboards, and fireplaces that gave the house its history. Some of that history is even written on the walls of the house’s original gun room, where notable guests like the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay signed their names.
The couple filled the house with bold contemporary art, treasures from around the world, family keepsakes, and unique furniture. Goggins spent a year picking out every vintage light fixture in the house. He even drove six hours to get a set of 1970s lounge chairs.
“Design and art are two of the great love languages. Walt and I find each other in the things that inspire us,” Conners says. “Walt doesn’t buy a Porsche; he buys a Kerry James Marshall.
That’s what he’ll stretch for,” she adds. Goggins says his drive to collect isn’t about ego or resale value. “I’m a poor kid from Georgia.
How great is it to have our child grow up around art and music and great furniture and all these things that are so life-affirming and expansive,” he says. “This house has stimulated me in ways I’ve never been stimulated before.”
The couple’s new home in the Hudson Valley reflects their unique tastes and love for art and design. The renovations let them put their own spin on the historic house while keeping its original charm.
This beautiful retreat has given Goggins and Conners a chance to escape from the busy life in LA and find new inspiration and creative energy.