Fawn Bluff: Michelle Pfeiffer, David E. Kelley Former Home Is Nature Retreat

Once upon a time — or, in TV years, the age between Boston Legal and Big Little Lies — producer David E. Kelley and actress Michelle Pfeiffer lived like the bears in Goldilocks, making a home in a cozy wooden lodge amid the evergreens of remote coastal British Columbia. Their closest neighbors were the grizzlies and black bears that wandered over from the aptly named Great Bear Rainforest. The nearest big city, Vancouver, was an hour’s seaplane ride away. High up on a bluff, they found sanctuary from the dancing Ally McBeal baby meme.

From 2007 to 2017, the duo and their children stayed at their massive timber-hewn mansion in Bute Inlet, set on 340 acres between orca- and humpback-filled Pacific channels and a spring-fed private lake with its own dock and guesthouse. Within the Douglas fir bones of the main house was a cinema, billiards room, chef’s kitchen and a towering stone fireplace as a centerpiece. A wraparound patio overlooked the misty waters below Estero Peak, known in the lore of the local Homalco First Nation people as the summit where their ancestors tied their canoes to survive the Great Flood. 

This could all be an advertisement for the bounty of Canada — so much so, it’s shocking that nature-seeking crowds haven’t already ruined it. Thankfully, as ownership of the lodge passed from the Hollywood icons to a French entrepreneur, the newly christened Fawn Bluff pledges to remain a sanctuary, now with sustainability at its core.

In a bold hospitality move, owners Claire and David Tuchbant sank $30 million into the property to reopen it this year as a nonprofit retreat available for exclusive buyouts (from CAD$24,306 a night, about $17,800 at today’s exchange rates). After covering operating costs, proceeds from Fawn Bluff will go to the Homalco community to open an addiction counseling and recovery center — many suffer from generational trauma — as well as to support Homalco art and rituals. 

“There’s a reason for us to be here,” David Tuchbant says via Zoom. “We bought a property in the middle of First Nations territory, so it’s now our mission and purpose to serve the community we, by accident, became a member of. We have no other purpose than to serve the Homalco First Nation community.”

Guests can join Homalco guides on bear-watching tours, learning about the local grizzly population and how to “walk with marshmallow feet” (aka tread softly). Up in an old fire tower, you may see a baby bear stumble down a riverbank while mama bear tries to manage her cub and catch their salmon dinner. It’s all the more meaningful to watch the salmon run, the eagles dive and the whales breach while hearing how the animals play into First Nation lore.

Engaging with the wilderness — heli-hiking snow-capped glaciers, kayaking teal alpine lagoons, foraging along mossy trails with chef Kwin Marion — is also core to the Fawn Bluff experience. In fact, it was the siren call of the orcas that lured David all the way from Paris to Bute Inlet. 

“I had just discovered the property while chasing orca whales — I’m a big fanatic of orca whales. They take care of each other. They’re the reason I’m in B.C.,” says David. “This property is quite unique in British Columbia. Our neighbors are mainly bears and whales. That makes a big difference — we are remote, but we are still connected to the rest of the world. You come back to civilization by boat. It’s a challenge, but it’s doable.”

He calls the family’s business model “hybrid projects”; in travel parlance, it’s an example of regenerative tourism — leaving the land better than when you came. The Tuchbants also are working on a farming school in France and building hybrid renewable energy systems at Fawn Bluff. “We are advancing plans for a micro-hydro generation project along Leask Creek [which feeds the lake], designed to provide consistent, low-impact power by working with the natural flow of the watershed rather than against it,” says operations manager Jonathan Clarke. 

Solar energy also is in the works. The weather up there can be tempestuous in the winter, so the property’s operators aim to store energy during peak daylight hours to reduce their overall reliance on fuel during their busiest times. (Fawn Bluff has a short-but-sweet season, June through mid-October.) The shift toward greater energy independence is both a strategic choice and a product of their isolation — you can’t exactly go next door to ask for help. This brand of remote luxury, though, is one that Goldilocks would find just right.

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2026 Sustainability Issue. Click here to read more.