Doctor Odyssey star Joshua Jackson has revealed why he is “actually excited” about his family’s future after losing his house in January’s devastating Palisades Fire.
“It [was] my childhood home and it is the place I’ve lived on and off for the last 25 years,” Jackson, 46, explained while appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, March 5.
Jackson confirmed on January 12 that the Topanga, California house where he was raised as a child actor – and which he later bought as an adult – burned down as wildfires ravaged the greater Los Angeles area. On The Tonight Show, the Dawson’s Creek actor admitted that life has not been “great” lately as he’s had to find temporary accommodations for his 4-year-old daughter Juno.
“Everybody’s safe,” he assured host Jimmy Fallon. “It’s devastating. It’s an interesting thing to wake up one morning and all you own is a grungy sweatsuit and a pair of shoes.”
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Jackson said that despite his family’s difficulties, he has made peace with the trauma of losing his home by visiting the rubble where the structure once stood.
“When I went to go see it, I’m standing in front of this thing and it’s still literally smoking,” he remembered. “I’m looking at it and [I realized] this bears no relation to my home. This is just a pile of stuff that burned in a fire.”
Joshua Jackson during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon. Todd Owyoung/NBC
Jackson surprised Fallon and his studio audience by mentioning he was “actually excited” to begin the rebuilding process as a way to give his daughter a fresh start.
“That house has given me so much over the years. I have loved it and it has loved me,” he added. “It has everything — the heartbreak, the baby, just life. All of life is in there. Every floorboard is a piece of my story.”
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Jackson continued: “I’m excited to build a new house that doesn’t have all of daddy’s history in it. It is for [my daughter] and I, so that when she grows up, every floorboard has her story in it … It’s not how I would have chosen to do a remodel but, in some ways, I’m actually excited about the process.”
Joshua Jackson during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon. Todd Owyoung/NBC
The actor’s positive outlook reflects his initial announcement of losing his house in January, in which he confirmed “all the people closest to [him] affected by the fire [were] OK.”
“My daughter, my family, my neighbors all made it out safely,” he noted. “Sadly my beautiful home did not survive the fires. But today, I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by the people I love.”
The actor revealed in 2021 that he’d purchased his childhood home as a form of “healing” from his troubled relationship with his father.
“My father, unfortunately, was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple,” the actor said in July 2021. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”
The star moved back into the Topanga house with his then-wife Jodie Turner-Smith in 2021, though she filed for divorce amid a messy split in October 2023. He later dated Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o between December 2023 and October 2024.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35p.m. ET on NBC.
