Mel Gibson’s Malibu home burned as he ripped Gavin Newsom on Joe Rogan’s show
Mel Gibson revealed Thursday that he lost his Malibu home in the Los Angeles wildfires while he was in Austin, Texas, sitting in Joe Rogan’s famous studio to record a podcast interview.
As Gibson said his girlfriend and young son were evacuating their home to escape the Palisades fire, he was recording an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, during which he predicted the end of civilization and accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of failing prevent the mass catastrophe that left him and thousands of others in the Los Angeles area without homes.
“I think all our tax dollars probably went for Gavin’s hair gel,” Gibson told Rogan on the show that aired Thursday. “It’s sad. The place is just on fire.”
When Gibson was recording Rogan’s show, he said he was waiting to find out if his home had been destroyed. He subsequently confirmed its loss during a phone interview with NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports, according to The Hollywood Reporter and the Daily Beast. The “Braveheart” actor told Vargas he had flown to Austin as the fierce Santa Ana winds were picking up earlier this week, joking that every time he leaves town, a fire breaks out.
The Palisades fire was first reported Tuesday morning in the hills above the upscale Los Angeles community. Whipped by winds, the flames quickly grew into a devastating firestorm that burned through neighborhoods and raced westward towards Malibu, only stopping when it reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. As of Friday, the fire had scorched more than 20,000 acres and destroyed more than 5,000 homes, businesses and local landmarks.
Gibson admitted to Vargas that he felt “ill at ease” while he was doing the Rogan podcast “because I knew my neighborhood was on fire, so I thought, I wonder if my place is still there.”
“When I got home, sure enough, it wasn’t there,” the father of nine told Vargas, initially trying to sound upbeat. “I went home and I said to myself, well, at least I haven’t got any of those pesky plumbing problems anymore.”
But the “Mad Max” actor also described the “devastating” feeling of losing the home where he had lived for more than 14 years with his girlfriend, Rosalind Ross, and his 7-year-old son, Lars.
“Obviously, it’s kind of devastating. It’s emotional,” Gibson said. “You live there for a long time, and you had all your stuff. I had my stuff there, and it’s all like, I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff, because it’s all in cinders.”
As Gibson spoke, NewsNation showed what remained of Gibson’s $14.5 million home, the Daily Beast said: A low stone wall, a pair of chimneys and their fireplaces, a few random metal framing supports, a pile of burned bricks and other rubble. Gibson said he had never seen a place “so perfectly burnt,” describing the area as “completely toasted.”
Gibson added that at least his chickens survived the fire, but not anything else. When Vargas pressed him on personal items he had lost, Gibson said, “All kinds of stuff, … Everything from photographs to files to, you know, you know, just personal things that I had from over the years, and clothing, you know, pretty cool stuff, you know, but you know that can all be replaced.”
The “good news,” Gibson said, is that “my family and those I love are all well, and we’re all happy and healthy and out of harm’s way, that’s all I can care about, really.”
While on Rogan’s show, Gibson and the host addressed the wildfires that erupted this week across the region, including the Eaton fire in Altadena and Pasadena. As of Friday morning, 10 people have been reported dead and more than 9,000 structures have been destroyed.
Gibson and Rogan both joined President-elect Donald Trump in saying that Newsom had being unprepared to handle such a mass catastrophe. They claimed that California spent billions of taxpayers’ money on programs to prevent homelessness but “zip” on measures that could have stopped the wildfires.
“In 2019, I think Newsom said, ‘I’m going to take care of the forest and maintain the forest’ and do all that kind of stuff,” Gibson claimed. “He didn’t do anything.”
Gibson also pondered whether the wildfires signal something even more apocalyptic.
“All those earmarks, the precursors of a collapse, they’re present in our time,” Gibson said told Rogan. “It doesn’t take long,” for a civilization to collapse, he said, citing Jared Diamond’s 2011 book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”
But when Gibson was talking to Vargas, he seemed less inclined to point the point at any single cause.
“Those winds were something else,” Gibson acknowledged, referring to gale-force winds that drove the fires out of control. “The water wasn’t doing what it should have. The forests weren’t cleared like they should have been. So I don’t know. It’s the perfect fire storm.”