A ‘Succession’ actor’s home features decor from family’s ‘eclectic’ past

At the end of 2019, actor David Rasche and his wife, Heather Rasche, a retired professor of acting at Rutgers University, moved from a two-bedroom co-op in Washington Heights to a six-bedroom Dutch Colonial Revival in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Nothing against upper Manhattan — the couple just wanted to live closer to their daughter Amelia, a casting director, and her family. And they were beguiled by the old-fashioned, small-town feel of Maplewood, if a bit puzzled by its limited architectural options.

“Some insane craze hit this area in around 1910, and 75% of the houses are Dutch Colonial Revival,” said David Rasche (pronounced RAH-shee), 80, who’s best known for playing Waystar Royco’s chief financial officer, Karl Muller, on the hit HBO series “Succession.” “You drive down the street and it’s Dutch Colonial, Dutch Colonial, Dutch Colonial.”

But the Rasches were good with a gambrel roof. They are even more bullish about the front porch, a favorite perch in both nice and not-so-nice weather to watch the passing scene and schmooze with neighbors, who are accustomed to celebrity-spotting in this slice of New Jersey.

“We have a very affable block,” said the similarly affable Rasche, who recently appeared on Broadway as the patriarch of a highly dysfunctional family in “Cult of Love” and has a recurring role in the forthcoming FX miniseries “Dying for Sex.”

The house has ample room for billeting family, including the couple’s two other children and four grandchildren, come holidays and summer vacations.

And let’s not forget location, location, location. Amelia’s house is but a 10-minute walk away; the New Jersey Transit station is nearer still. “I can go out my front door and step on the train in eight minutes,” Rasche said.

Family ties brought the Rasches to Maplewood, and brought them much of the house’s decor. Many of the pieces were owned by relatives, made by relatives or bought in the company of relatives. That has provided continuity over the years, Heather Rasche said: “Old friends have walked into the places we’ve lived in and tell us they all look the same.”

“Kind of an eclectic mix of stuff,” she added. “I didn’t necessarily want it all. But nobody else would take it and it was too good to give away so we just keep moving it to different locations.”

A hutch — topped by bowls bought after spotting them in the window of a shop during a family trip to Cortona, Italy — once belonged to David Rasche’s maternal grandmother.

“I think she bought it when she and my grandfather got married in maybe 1900 or something, so that’s a very precious item,” David Rasche said.

David Rasche grew up in Belleville, Illinois, right across the river from St. Louis. “My daughter found this bell from a St. Louis trolley online and bought it for me,” he said. “You know ‘The Trolley Song,’ of course,” he added, referring to the Judy Garland number in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

Nearby are Mission-style dining chairs he and his wife bought when they married in 1979. They’ve since swapped out the original square table for a round one.

When the Rasches moved into the house, the kitchen and the dining area were separated by a wall. They got rid of that wall, along with the “crappy imitation overhead oak cabinets,” as Heather Rasche put it. “I’m not into overhead cabinets at all, as you can see.” She made an exception for the hanging cupboard previously owned by her stepmother.

As part of the kitchen renovation, the Rasches paved the walls in Delft-style tiles and installed deep blue storage drawers — a look inspired by 19th- and early-20th-century Swedish illustrator Carl Larsson.

The couple had long intended to repaint the walls of the sitting room but, what with one thing and another, didn’t get around to it until recently, they said.

“But don’t ask when,” David Rasche said.

“When?”

“Last night,” Heather Rasche said.

“No!”

“Yes.”

“My career is in the toilet,” David Rasche deadpanned, by way of explaining why the half bath near the kitchen holds the two Screen Actors Guild trophies he was awarded for being part of the “Succession” ensemble. The “Old” sculpture sitting between them was made by the Rasches’ son August, a tribute to dear (old) dad.

The bathroom also features a Hirschfeld caricature of several actors including David Rasche. It heralded his performance as the title character in the 1996 off-Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Edmond.”

Several years ago, during an unexpected delay with a TV show David Rasche was on, the couple visited Morocco. “It was the most remarkable trip I’ve ever taken,” said David Rasche, who came back with several rugs. “Very precious. Very beautiful.” One of them is on the floor of his office on the second floor.

There’s plenty here to remind David Rasche of where he came from and whom he came from. A portrait of his paternal great-grandfather hangs on a wall of the office over the keyboard. The lamp on the desk belonged to his father.

“Now, here’s something I love,” Rasche said. “My grandpa was a farmer, and he had a wooden tool chest that he kept in his truck. I put it on coasters and now it’s a coffee table.”

The living room is anchored by a baby grand piano, a Kawai, that the couple bought 35 years ago or thereabouts. “I play it and write songs about unrequited love,” David Rasche said, ticking off the titles of a few compositions: “It Was Your Fault,” “I Wish I Was Married to Your Wife.”

The godmother of Heather Rasche’s stepmother — “we called her Aunt Florence,” Heather Rasche said — is well represented. The two fiddleback chairs near the entryway were once hers, as were the Victorian chest of drawers and the incense burner on a window sill and the vase.

But the Rasches have done plenty of their own collecting. Consider the stone bust by the front door, a find in Santa Barbara, California. “I don’t know who it is, but we love it,” Heather Rasche said. “I put a hat on it every holiday — a Santa hat at Christmas, bunny ears at Easter. It’s like my decorating thing.”

A more practical purchase was the squashy couch, at the South Orange Maplewood online swap meet. “We were showing our apartment in New York to sell, so we came here with like zero,” Heather Rasche said.

Now, they have the opposite problem. “I was talking about buying something or other at a garage sale, and a friend said, ‘Oh, are you still acquiring things?’ meaning ‘Oh, are you getting more crap?’” David Rasche said. “And I thought, ‘Yeah. Maybe we should stop.’”