Eric Wareheim’s Uncommon Plant Obsession: Infacet Serpentine’s Botanical Artwork

Eric Wareheim brandishes an ornate strolling stick on the entrance to his appointment-only plant artwork atelier alongside an industrial stretch of East L.A. “Welcome to my botanical wonderland,” he says with a smile, waving the cane topped with a snake’s head earlier than the array of dramatic flora round him. Wareheim — whose surrealist, absurdist work throughout movie and tv as an actor, author, director and producer reshaped modern comedy — currently has been holed up in any respect hours at this sprawling indoor-outdoor compound referred to as Serpentine. He’s change into the Willy Wonka of a distinct segment, obsessive, luxuriant realm.

“I just had this awakening of putting a crazy tree in a cool vessel,” Wareheim says. The species are from throughout the globe. What they share is a spectacular Seussian impact, both by their nature or else as cultivated by way of the observe of bonsai. He bounds throughout the property with endless enthusiasm. “Look at this serious chunker!” Wareheim says of 1 thick, palm-like cycad. Pointing to a moringa tree, he goes, “Such a strange creature, I love him,” fluffing the fragile new leaves which have sprouted from its distinguished stump. “This zigzag is just incredible, I could stare all day,” he exults of a dog-legging specimen.

The solely vegetation for Wareheim are the misshapen ones, the otherworldly freak reveals. He both discovers these true weirdos — coiled trunks, torqued branches, odd leaf types — or conjures them, alongside a small skilled group of his workshop Oompa Loompas. The items bend, flip and develop as they do due to their constraints, typically imposed. “They’ve all had, shall we say, a unique upbringing,” he says of what unites the disparate assortment. “They have to struggle to find the light.”

Film producer Matt Dines, a plant collector who has bought from Serpentine, considers Wareheim’s newest ardour mission “an extension of the same pursuit of wonder we know from his comedy,” explaining that “he’s finding and presenting these white whales that are so specific and strange that they just take your breath away.” Dines provides, approvingly, that Wareheim “is clearly afflicted. He’s beyond choosing to do this. Something has taken over. He can’t help it.”

Wareheim’s pal Bob Odenkirk recollects being overwhelmed by “Eric’s energy and his poetic expression of his own delight” on his first go to to Serpentine. “He sees the world from another plane — through these plants, of all things — and he’s able to get you to see it, too,” the actor says. “It provokes something in you. It’s stunning.”

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Wareheim, in tandem along with his inventive companion Tim Heidecker, influenced the zeitgeist twenty years in the past with a singular offbeat anti-humor that prized nonsense and awkwardness in addition to the uncanny and the grotesque. Their work blended and prolonged the sensibilities of John Waters, David Lynch, Pee-wee Herman and Andy Kaufman. The postmodern lingua franca of right now’s web meme tradition owes a lot to Wareheim and Heidecker, notably their Adult Swim sketch sequence Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

The duo’s firm, Abso Lutely, produced breakout tasks from Eric André and Nathan Fielder. They additionally began and bought an promoting company. Wareheim’s signature model has discovered him in demand as a director for music movies (Charli XCX, Major Lazer) in addition to for commercials (Duracell batteries, Little Caesars pizzas). Pharmaceutical big Novartis and the NFL employed him for a 60-second spot to encourage prostate most cancers screening, with the tagline, “Relax your tight end.”

In the previous decade, he bought actually into wine. Not simply, I bought my promoting company and purchased a cellar filled with Opus One and Screaming Eagle, into wine. He co-founded a vineyard, Las Jaras, whose vital success is not any joke. Its chenin blanc gained the highest honor this 12 months on the fiftieth anniversary redo of the famed Judgment of Paris competitors. Still, the model makes an attempt to undercut perceived pretension. It named its flagship providing Sweet Berry Wine (which Bon Appétit deemed “delicious, and fun to drink”) after a catchphrase from a Tim and Eric sketch.

During this time, Wareheim — who performed the epicurean Arnold reverse his real-life foodie pal Aziz Ansari on Netflix’s Master of None — additionally turned a best-selling cookbook writer with the playful Foodheim. (In 2025, he adopted up with an exuberant socio-anthropological examine referred to as Steak House.) “As a comedian going into a new space creatively, people wanted to take me down,” Wareheim recollects. “Maybe not viciously. But they’re like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I wanted to prove myself. It’s the same now with plants.”

Since childhood, Wareheim, 50, has been all in about his pursuits, whether or not sweet or baseball playing cards or music. He’s an enterprising autodidact: “I just have this hustle spirit, which is very Philly.” (He grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Temple University, the place he met Heidecker.) “I like when things are challenging and hard. It’s a joy to crack the code.”

The varied strands of Wareheim’s cultural omnivorousness are related by two key character traits. “I’m a people pleaser,” he says, “and I love pleasure.”

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Wareheim’s plant fixation first took root as he reeled from a foul breakup. “I turned to this and I was like, ‘God, this is peaceful and quiet,’ ” he explains. “I’m creating life versus something dying.”

Soon, he’d stuffed his Eastside house with sculptural specimens from The Tropics, a high-priced West Hollywood nursery with a cult repute amongst manufacturing designers and inside decorators for its pairing of distinctive uncommon flora and minimalist, typically brutalist planters. “I learned everything from Ryan,” he says, referring to proprietor Ryan Hroziencik, whom he regards as Southern California’s plant artwork progenitor and “my hero.”

His personal aesthetic at Serpentine leans whimsical and colossal. (Wareheim himself is 6-foot-7.) A pop star lately bought a towering Australian bottle tree for the island in the midst of the pool at her L.A. mansion. “My crew here is like, ‘Why do we have these big things? You’re not going to sell them.’ I’m like, ‘Watch!’ If you build it, they will come. Because people don’t know it’s a possibility until they see it and go, ‘Wait, I can have that in my house?!’ ” (Serpentine’s extra sensational choices usually price between 4 and 5 figures.)

Notes Daniel Deephouse, a panorama designer and assistant curator of the bonsai assortment at Pasadena’s Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens: “Eric’s often putting incredibly big specimens in these big pots. There’s a big social element to doing that. These are intriguing conversation pieces.”

These days, at Wareheim’s personal hillside house in Mount Washington, “there’s no place to sit. I’m dialing it back.” He laughs. “I’m learning about negative space. It’s hard. I want to put three times the amount of stuff in there.”

Lena Kohl, an architect who employed Wareheim to panorama the outside at a Mexican seafood restaurant she co-owns in Frogtown referred to as Loreto (“I didn’t know him at first from his Hollywood things — I just thought he was a fancy botanical person”), says of the sheer quantity of vegetation at his residence: “I told him I was a little structurally scared for him!” Nonetheless, she expresses full confidence in his style. “You see his personality in what he selects and how he arranges them. It’s all very Eric.”

Landscape artist Lily Kwong approvingly observes that “there’s something that’s ‘off’ to everything” at Serpentine, an working precept she attributes partly to Wareheim’s comedic mind. “I’m married to a comedian” — Nick Kroll — “and comedians go at the thing that’s sideways. Or they turn it sideways. That’s just what they do.”

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Wareheim, whose mom has lengthy been “a master gardener,” wasn’t content material with the usual limits of a horticultural hobbyist. So, he determined to go professional and open a store, with the privileges that entails. “Once you have a plant business, you’re welcomed into a lot more places,” he says of the hidden realm of VIP botanophiles. “Nursery owners grant you access to things you wouldn’t otherwise get.” Wareheim can see an extended future in his inexperienced thumb period: “A lot of the plant people I hang out with now are in their 70s and early 80s. They seem very happy just tinkering around.”

These days, he’s spending 12-plus-hour days on website. “I’m here all the time,” he says. “It’s so intense. I haven’t seen a TV show or a movie in two years, which is very strange for me. When I go home, I watch bonsai training videos. When I ride my bike, I can’t make it a block without pulling over and looking up what that tree is.” Wareheim does take nominal breaks — to scout recent stock on journeys all over the world. “I’m seeing someone right now, and my idea of a great date is to go to a nursery,” says Wareheim. “But I’m not even fun. I’m run-walking around, taking pictures and notes on my phone.” (He secures a few of his greatest specimens from Facebook Marketplace, using a pseudonym: “I’m giving the cheat codes right now.”)

Wareheim sometimes goes MIA at Serpentine for profitable industrial directing gigs, all to stay liquid since he’s “depleted a good chunk of my life savings” on the endeavor. “The thing about spending most of your cash on trees,” he says, “is you’ve got to make some money somehow!”

Several of his Hollywood tasks in recent times haven’t panned out or stay in improvement hell. “Tim and I had two really good scripts at Showtime and HBO, and they tied us up for a long time,” he says. “Emotionally, that hurts.” He’d shopped a journey program together with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. Buyers had been however nervous in regards to the optics of a present revolving round two rich, gallivanting white guys.

Wareheim nonetheless has hopes for a darkish dramedy he’s pursuing at AMC about intrigue in Napa Valley. “It’s maybe the best script of my career,” he says, earlier than sighing: “TV is just in a weird place right now. It’s impossible.” Alexander Skarsgard has been connected to star. “There’s a lot of [narrative] juice in wine,” he assures. “This thing has 20 characters.” His pitch: “David Lynch meets Boogie Nights — set in the wine world.”

His lengthy expertise with high trade executives and A-list expertise is useful when coping with his Serpentine clientele. “Literally just delivering these plants is a whole thing,” he explains, detailing a course of that melds the delicate logistics and personas of the positive artwork world. “It’s a crane, it’s a vehicle, it’s insurance.” He additionally rents his items out — singer-songwriter Troye Sivan made use of some Japanese maples for a perfume launch — and hosts occasions like sound baths on the East L.A. compound. “What he’s doing with [Serpentine],” observes musician Albert Hammond Jr., who’s bought 4 items for his house from Wareheim, “it feels like a club you want to be a part of.”

Serpentine is called for the curvaceousness Wareheim covets within the specimens, in addition to his curiosity in rebirth. “The shedding of the skin,” he clarifies. “I haven’t left the entertainment community, but I really dove into something else — and it’s scary. To do this, it’s not easy. It’s a lot of learning. It’s putting me out there.” He pauses. “But I’ve never not done that. I’ve only done that.”

Wareheim recollects his nervousness about Heidecker’s first go to to Serpentine. He was prepared for his previous pal to “rip me apart,” explaining, “Tim’s just a very Philly guy. He’s complimented me three times in my entire life.” But on that go to to the East L.A. compound, “Tim called me an artist for the first time ever. It was the most validation. I almost cried.”

Heidecker says: “At first, with the plants, I didn’t get it. I was like, ‘Everything OK?’ ” But finally all of it made sense. “There’s a trajectory of passion and deep interest and then perfection to everything he does, and this is just a continuation. He’s so entrepreneurial and like a mad scientist following a quest of finding ways to express himself and sharing it with the world.”

This story appeared within the Aug. 12 concern of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.