Billy Crystal Opens up About His Longtime Home Being Destroyed in the 2025 LA Wildfires

Nearly two years after the LA wildfires destroyed his longtime home, Billy Crystal opens up about the tough experience.

During a recent interview with PEOPLE, Crystal reflected on seeing the residence shortly after the wildfires came through the neighborhood. He and his wife, Janice, had bought the property in 1979.

“All you could see were skeletons of trees and chimneys,” he said while recalling the aftermath of the wildfires. “The ones that hadn’t fallen, stuff blowing in the streets, nobody around. It was like an episode of The Walking Dead, like this thing had just come through and wiped out everything.”

As Crystal and his family walked through what was left of their home, the actor’s daughter found a rock from their garden that had survived the devastation. The word “laughter” was engraved on it.

“That’s what’s gotten me through tough times, starting when I was 15, when my father died,” he said about laughter.

The wildfire devastation inspired Crystal to develop his new one-man show, 860. He named it after the street address of his once-beloved home.

“It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, I’m going to make a play out of this,’ ” he says. “No, it was healing me at the same time.”

However, Crystal faced a major setback for the show less than a year after the wildfires. His longtime friends Rob and Michele Reiner were murdered.

Rob had encouraged the actor to put the show together. Despite writing it during the “worst year” of his life, Crystal is proud of the show.

“It’s not just about our home. This is a story about resilience, about family, about laughing, loving, support, moving forward, facing things you never thought were possible and coming to grips with it,” he pointed out. “And then turning it into something that feels beautiful to do every time I do it.”

860 is slated to open on Oct. 21.