Hollywood Director Ruben Fleischer’s Historic Estate Demonstrates Livability on a Grand Scale

As a Hollywood producer and director, Ruben Fleischer is a hands-on perfectionist who cannot help but dive into the weeds, including production design and set decoration, on any project. So, when he and his wife, Holly Shakoor Fleischer, purchased a 1909 mansion in New Jersey, they had plenty of ideas on the direction for the 23-room, 10,000-square-foot Tudor-style home, situated on park-like grounds designed by the Olmsted Brothers. To translate that into a cohesive vision, the Fleischers, parents of two young daughters, enlisted Manhattan-based AD PRO Directory firm Studio DB, run by husband-and-wife design duo Damian and Britt Zunino. “Their body of work spoke to our tastes and ambitions,” Ruben notes. “It was a natural marriage to take this house and infuse it with their sophisticated design instincts and then whatever two cents we had to pitch in.”

The Fleischers, East Coast natives who moved to be closer to Holly’s family after living in Los Angeles for more than two decades, had an airtight timeline given professional and school schedules. So the team set to work peeling away layers—“crazy wallpaper and a giant carved-wood elephant head on the wall,” Britt recalls—remnants of what had at one time been a decorating show house. “I think he’s definitely used to having things done instantly on a movie set,” explains Britt of her auteur client, whose directing credits include the Zombieland movies and 2022’s box-office hit Uncharted, starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, and Antonio Banderas. “We could just get in and get it done.”

The front stair hall, which had to be stripped of floral plaster appliqué lining the walls, offers a sense of the home’s impressive scale, and the designers used it as an opportunity to showcase several artistic elements: a totem light from Allied Maker, console from House of Badami, and paintings by Geoff McFetridge (left) and Barry McGee. “The staircase was definitely a project, but a big transformation,” Britt notes.

Art: Geoff McFetridge

Aside from fixing a few leaks, reconfiguring the kitchen, installing a mudroom, and turning an upstairs bathroom into the laundry room, little structural intervention was required. (A relief, Damian notes, in a fully fireproof, solid-block structure built over a century ago.) Instead, the team focused on retaining and highlighting the home’s exquisite details, such as wood paneling, crown moldings, and intricate plasterwork while making it feel fresh and relevant. It was their “North Star design principle,” Ruben recalls, “to respect its original integrity and feel, but make it at the same time modern for [our] family to live in and utilize.”

Among Studio DB’s métiers is a knack for translating how a client lives through thoughtfully rendered spaces. For Ruben, who is currently in preproduction on the upcoming feature Now You 3 Me, the third installment of the hit Lionsgate franchise Now You See Me, and Holly, a former top entertainment publicist and cohost of the independent podcast series Going Thru It, much of that routine centers their two daughters, Jack and Goldie. Encouraging play and imagination through “magical spaces,” Britt says, resulted in dedicated rooms for Legos and other toys, homework and crafts, and even a video game arcade.

In a corner of the living room, a cozy fireside seating area was created by positioning a Rikke Frost Sideways sofa from Carl Hansen & Son—with throw pillows from Zak+Fox and Soho Home—in front of a coffee table from Mambo Unlimited Ideas. The Oscar flush-mount ceiling light from RW Guild and Circuit sconces from Apparatus cast a flattering glow. The photo hanging above the bookcase was taken by Ruben on a family trip to Africa.

Art: Anne Leone/Galerie Friedmann-Hahn Berlin, Germany