After less than two years of ownership, John Wells has sold his elegant Hancock Park estate for $7.3 million. While that’s more than the $7 million the prolific TV creator (“Shameless,” “The West Wing,” “ER”) paid in January 2020, it’s also significantly less than his nearly $7.9 million asking price, and an arguably very fair deal for a designer-renovated home in one of L.A.’s most exclusive neighborhoods. And as it turns out, the discount-minded buyers were prominent Hollywood actress Alexandra Daddario (“The White Lotus,” “San Andreas,” “Baywatch,” the “Percy Jackson” series, Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive”) and her partner, film producer Andrew Form.
It’s not surprising that the Daddario-Forms would be in the mood for a pricey real estate purchase, as both badly needed a new home. Last December, Daddario, 35, sold her Los Angeles “starter” house — a $1.5 million, unassuming midcentury bungalow in the Hollywood Dell neighborhood. As for Form, 52, he previously lived with his wife Jordan Brewster in a $10 million Brentwood mansion. The couple’s divorce was finalized in June, and Brewster subsequently bought out Form’s 50% share in that house.
Resting mid-block on one of Hancock Park’s most celeb-popular streets and hidden behind manicured hedges, the house was built in 1927. From the sidewalk, a stairway leads past two majestic Italian cypresses and a pair of gnarled olive trees standing guard out front. Per the listing, the house is “French Mediterranean” in style, with exquisite grounds “reminiscent of the French countryside.” (Indeed, the property looks like something that walked out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief” or climbed down from the hills of France’s Côte d’Azur.0
But the old-world style ends with the home’s exterior, because inside things are decidedly contemporary and on-trend. That’s thanks to the people who sold it to Wells — high-powered L.A. architect William Hefner and his wife, the late Japanese interior designer Kazuko Hoshino. It was Hoshino who designed the 5,300-square-foot home’s interiors, which are elegantly restrained and somehow manage to successfully tread the pathway between formal and casual. Subtle decorative flourishes throughout the house complement, rather than clash with, the overall package’s clean lines.
Brett Lawyer of Hilton & Hyland held the listing; Jonah Wilson of Hilton & Hyland repped the buyers.
More from DIRT
About the Author
