Comedian Eric Wareheim Is a Grower and a Shower (of Weird, Rare Plants)

Eric Wareheim brandishes an ornate walking stick at the entrance to his appointment-only plant art atelier along an industrial stretch of East L.A. “Welcome to my botanical wonderland,” he says with a grin, waving the cane topped with a snake’s head before the array of dramatic flora around him. Wareheim — whose surrealist, absurdist work across film and television as an actor, writer, director and producer reshaped contemporary comedy — lately has been holed up at all hours at this sprawling indoor-outdoor compound called Serpentine. He’s become the Willy Wonka of a niche, obsessive, luxuriant realm.

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

The only plants for Wareheim are the misshapen ones, the otherworldly freak shows. He either discovers these true weirdos — coiled trunks, torqued branches, odd leaf forms — or conjures them, alongside a small professional team of his workshop Oompa Loompas. The pieces bend, turn and grow as they do because of their constraints, often imposed. “They’ve all had, shall we say, a unique upbringing,” he says of what unites the disparate collection. “They have to struggle to find the light.”

Film producer Matt Dines, a plant collector who has purchased from Serpentine, considers Wareheim’s latest passion project “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 adds, approvingly, that Wareheim “is clearly afflicted. He’s beyond choosing to do this. Something has taken over. He can’t help it.”

Wareheim’s friend Bob Odenkirk recalls being overwhelmed by “Eric’s energy and his poetic expression of his own delight” on his first visit 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.”

Wareheim, in tandem with his creative partner Tim Heidecker, influenced the zeitgeist two decades ago with a singular offbeat anti-humor that prized nonsense and awkwardness as well as the uncanny and the grotesque. Their work blended and extended the sensibilities of John Waters, David Lynch, Pee-wee Herman and Andy Kaufman. The postmodern lingua franca of today’s internet meme culture owes much to Wareheim and Heidecker, particularly their Adult Swim sketch series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

The duo’s company, Abso Lutely, produced breakout projects from Eric André and Nathan Fielder. They also started and sold an advertising agency. Wareheim’s signature style has found him in demand as a director for music videos (Charli XCX, Major Lazer) as well as for commercials (Duracell batteries, Little Caesars pizzas). Pharmaceutical giant Novartis and the NFL hired him for a 60-second spot to encourage prostate cancer screening, with the tagline, “Relax your tight end.”

In the past decade, he got really into wine. Not just, I sold my advertising agency and bought a cellar full of Opus One and Screaming Eagle, into wine. He co-founded a winery, Las Jaras, whose critical success is no joke. Its chenin blanc won the top honor this year at the 50th anniversary redo of the famed Judgment of Paris competition. Still, the brand attempts to undercut perceived pretension. It named its flagship offering 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 played the epicurean Arnold opposite his real-life foodie friend Aziz Ansari on Netflix’s Master of None— also became a best-selling cookbook author with the playful Foodheim. (In 2025, he followed up with an exuberant socio-anthropological study called Steak House.) “As a comedian going into a new space creatively, people wanted to take me down,” Wareheim recalls. “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 interests, whether candy or baseball 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, where he met Heidecker.) “I like when things are challenging and hard. It’s a joy to crack the code.”

The various strands of Wareheim’s cultural omnivorousness are connected 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 bad 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 filled his Eastside home with sculptural specimens from The Tropics, a high-priced West Hollywood nursery with a cult reputation among production designers and interior decorators for its pairing of distinctive rare flora and minimalist, often brutalist planters. “I learned everything from Ryan,” he says, referring to owner Ryan Hroziencik, whom he regards as Southern California’s plant art progenitor and “my hero.”

His own aesthetic at Serpentine leans whimsical and colossal. (Wareheim himself is 6-foot-7.) A pop star recently purchased a towering Australian bottle tree for the island in the middle 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 more sensational offerings typically cost between four and five figures.)

Notes Daniel Deephouse, a landscape designer and assistant curator of the bonsai collection 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 own hillside home 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 hired Wareheim to landscape the outdoors at a Mexican seafood restaurant she co-owns in Frogtown called 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 volume of plants at his residence: “I told him I was a little structurally scared for him!” Nonetheless, she expresses full confidence in his taste. “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 operating principle she attributes in part to Wareheim’s comedic brain. “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 mother has long been “a master gardener,” wasn’t content with the standard limits of a horticultural hobbyist. So, he decided to go pro and open a shop, 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 a long future in his green thumb era: “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 site. “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 fresh inventory on trips around 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 some of his best specimens from Facebook Marketplace, employing a pseudonym: “I’m giving the cheat codes right now.”)

Wareheim occasionally goes MIA at Serpentine for lucrative commercial directing gigs, all to remain 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 projects in recent years haven’t panned out or remain in development 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 travel program along with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. Buyers were interested but worried about the optics of a show revolving around two wealthy, gallivanting white guys

Wareheim still has hopes for a dark dramedy he’s pursuing at AMC about intrigue in Napa Valley. “It’s maybe the best script of my career,” he says, before sighing: “TV is just in a weird place right now. It’s impossible.” Alexander Skarsgard has been attached 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 long experience with top industry executives and A-list talent comes in handy when dealing with his Serpentine clientele. “Literally just delivering these plants is a whole thing,” he explains, detailing a process that melds the sensitive logistics and personas of the fine art world. “It’s a crane, it’s a vehicle, it’s insurance.” He also rents his pieces out — singer-songwriter Troye Sivan made use of some Japanese maples for a fragrance launch — and hosts events like sound baths at the East L.A. compound. “What he’s doing with [Serpentine],” observes musician Albert Hammond Jr., who’s purchased four pieces for his home from Wareheim, “it feels like a club you want to be a part of.”

Serpentine is named for the curvaceousness Wareheim covets in the specimens, as well as his interest 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 recalls his anxiety about Heidecker’s first visit to Serpentine. He was ready for his old friend 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 visit 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 eventually it all 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 in the Aug. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.