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Lioness actress Jill Wagner left L.A. for Tennessee to reconnect with her Southern roots
Wagner, and her husband opened up their 100-year old Tennessee farmhouse, which they painstakingly restored to its former glory, exclusively to PEOPLE
The Hallmark and Great American Family star says their ‘Little House on the Prairie’ life on the farm is slow-paced and far from Hollywood glamour
Nine years ago, when Jill Wagner first laid eyes on the neoclassical farmhouse known as Scott Mansion in the tiny Tennessee town of Tellico Plains, “it looked like a scary haunted house,” recalls the actress.
Built in 1912 by a local lumber magnate and philanthropist, the home had been vacant for a decade and had fallen into disrepair. “She was a sad old girl,” says Wagner.
But as Wagner and her then-fiance, David Lemanowicz, a former professional hockey player who’s now an officer in the Army Reserves, looked across the 200 acres of rolling hills it sits on, they imagined their future.
Alyssa Rosenheck
Jill Wagner and husband David Lemanowicz at home on their Tennessee farm
“We wanted a family, and I saw my children running around in the front yard,” says the star, 46, who now shares daughters Army Gray, 5, and Daisy Roberta, 3, with Lemanowicz (his daughter from a previous marriage, Lija, 15, also spends time on the farm). “I knew it could be fixed. And I wanted to be the one to restore this piece of history.”
Alyssa Rosenheck
Wagner’s daughters Army Gray and Daisy Roberta with stepdaughter Lija
That, however, proved no easy task.
Wagner knew when she and Lemanowicz, 49, began searching for a place to buy in 2016 that she was ready to leave L.A. behind.
She’d moved to California from her native North Carolina to pursue acting, going on to host the ABC game show Wipeout and star on the MTV hit Teen Wolf , and in several Hallmark and Great American Family movies before landing her role on the Paramount+ CIA thriller Lioness, opposite Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldaña. “L.A. held a very special place in my heart for my twenties and my thirties. But I’m a small town girl at heart. That’s where I feel comfortable,” she shares.
Perched high on a hill with views of the Great Smoky Mountains, the farm reminded her of her childhood. “I grew up in a small town, so for the 20 years that I lived in L.A., I was starved of the things I was used to,” Wagner says. Moving to a town of 800 people “didn’t feel like a loss. It felt like I gained something that I’d been missing.”
Restoring the century-old mansion to its former glory—and making it a functional family home—was a more challenging transition that took 18 months to complete. “we did have to do a lot of work on it. But I couldn’t think of anything better to spend my money on than restoring a piece of history,” she says.
And the project proved to be a test of her relationship with Lemanowicz as well:“We got married, moved cross-country and went through a renovation all within a year. I’m proud we stayed together!”
Wagner says she was determined to preserve the mansion’s grandeur, but “I don’t want to live in a museum. I definitely wanted the outside to be restored to what it was and the inside to maintain a sense of who she was, but still be livable and still add our own style.”
Alyssa Rosenheck
Wagner’s living room features an original chandelier and custom built shelving
The renovation work did require, however, a shift in her own design aesthetic: A self-proclaimed “mid-century modern girl” at heart, Wagner had to set aside her preferred look: “It was not fitting in that house.”
As just the third owners of the property, the couple made a point of keeping pieces with history, like the original piano and chandeliers.
“As a girl I wished I could live in a place this magical”
Jill Wagner
And when they realized they needed to replace the crumbling two-story porch columns (the owls that were living in them were later re-homed in a barn), they tracked down the manufacturer, who was fatefully still in business and they had exact replicas created. “I wanted to stay true to what the home was,” she says.
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As for the renovation result, she says, “I feel very lucky to be the person that gets to live here. As a girl, I wished I could live in a place this magical.”
The decor pays homage to turn-of-the-20th-century style, like, in the kitchen, where Wagner splurged on a new La Cornue range (the French stoves cost more than $10,000) that looks like an antique. “I’m proud that people come in and are like, ‘Gosh, was this here?’ ”
Alyssa Rosenheck
Kitchen of Jill Wagner’s Tennessee home
They also transformed the dated “harvest gold” kitchen decor with white cabinetry accented with dark wood. “My husband didn’t have a huge desire to help me design — he trusts me. But he did say one thing. He said, ‘I want the kitchen to be white and bright. I want it to wake me up.'” Now, “it’s the most used room in the house,” she says. “We don’t eat in the dining room. In the evenings, we sit around the kitchen, have dinner and talk to the girls about their day.”
Several rooms feature custom murals with personal meaning. The music room is painted with a floral motif as an homage to Wagner’s beloved grandmother Roberta, whose gardens the actress remembers fondly.
And above the fireplace is a painted bluebird, representing her grandmother, who once told Wagner that if she were ever to be reincarnated, she’d like to return as a bluebird.
Alyssa Rosenheck
Music room in Jill Wagner’s home
Hanging in one hallway is a nod to Wagner’s Hollywood ties: a pastel of ’30s film star Jean Harlow. (The icon, who died at the age of 26 of kidney failure sat for the portrait!) Wagner bought it from the estate sale of the late actress Debbie Reynolds.
Even while she’s many miles from the bright lights of Hollywood, It’s a reminder to herself that “You come from this world too, you’re an artist,” Wagner says of the portrait. “I like to be reminded that there’s all sides to us.”
Alyssa Rosenheck
Portrait of Jean Harlow in Jill Wagner’s home
But more precious than any of the home’s possessions is the life she and her husband have built on the farm, where more than a dozen cattle graze the land—all pets, says Wagner: “I eat beef, but I just can’t eat my buddies”—and where their girls are home-schooled on the property.
“It’s Little House on the Prairie here,” she says of the one-room chapel/schoolhouse where they learn, a “special place” that they also restored, where Wagner and her husband prayed before buying the property. “It was at the top end of our budget at that time,” Wagner says. “We prayed, ‘God, if this is meant for us, then you’ll find a way.’
Alyssa Rosenheck
Wagner with husband David Lemanowicz, photographed for PEOPLE in May 2025
They’ve also opened their land to the community with their annual Patriotic Pick (on Sept. 6 this year), where visitors pluck muscadine grapes from vines the couple planted, with ticket sales benefiting the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
Wagner knows her country life isn’t as glamorous, but that’s the point.
The slower pace “allows us to connect deeper. It forces us to talk to each other because there’s not much going on!” she says. “Some friends in L.A. are like, ‘What do you do there?’ I watch my cows, I garden, I go outside with the girls, we hike. I find my connection on the farm, with human beings and with nature.”
Read the original article on People
