Nancy Meyers’s Daughter Grew Up Absorbing Her Mom’s Good Taste. Now she’s Sharing All of It

It sounds like the setup for a Nancy Meyers movie: A young Los Angeles family searches endlessly for their dream house but nothing feels right. The husband’s mother—who happens to live in a picture-perfect 1940s home in Beverly Hills—decamps to Montecito and decides she is better suited to a life of lemons and eucalyptus. And then offers her city house to her son and his family as a gift.As Annie Meyers-Shyer—who happens to be the daughter of the director known for such beloved rom-coms as Something’s Gotta Give and The Holiday—tells it, she was flipping pancakes one morning when her husband, lawyer Robby Koch, came to share the news. “Your mom said what? I can barely hear you. Come closer!” she told him, straining to hear over the shouts of their two young sons.“She said we could move into her house,” her husband shouted back. “She wants to stay in Montecito full-time. I said no thank you.”She burned the pancakes. Then persuaded Robby to graciously tell his mother yes thank you.Nancy Meyers Photo: Amy NeunsingerAnnie Meyers-Shyer Photo: Roger DaviesThe breakfast nook Photo: Roger DaviesFive years, one viral Instagram account, and one top-to-bottom but respectful renovation of her husband’s family home later, we know how that movie turned out: with a happy ending.“You were a huge influence on my choices for this house,” Annie told her mother on a recent Saturday morning when she stopped by her mom’s Provençal-style home in Los Angeles. They were both up to their eyeballs: Nancy is in the midst of shooting her first film in over a decade (starring Penélope Cruz, Kieran Culkin, and Jude Law). Annie’s first book, This Oak House (Chronicle Books), is launching on September 15.“You worked very late last night,” Annie says.“I got home at 3:30 in the morning,” her mother admits.The IG that started it allNancy wrote the foreward for the book Before there was the book, there was the This Oak House Instagram account. Annie launched it in 2023—a few months after beginning construction—to document the renovation. “There is a lot of gatekeeping in interiors,” she says, adding that while people post constantly online, they “do not share.” The things she always really wanted to know—specific brands and sources—were often kept secret. “I would find myself DM’ing a decorator, saying, ‘I really love that rug. What is it?’ But I wouldn’t hear back. And my nature is to deep-dive on things.”“Huge understatement,” Nancy pipes in.She started @thisoakhouse mostly as a lark—a way of documenting her progress and asking friends to weigh in on everything from paint colors to window treatments. But then her mother called attention to it on her own Instagram account, where she wrote: “@thisoakhouse is a great one to follow. My daughter Annie’s adventure in remodeling a beautiful old house into a beautiful new house.”The living room configured with the help of Nancy. “We extended an old George Smith sofa we inherited from 7′ to 8′, remade the arms, and fabricated the chairs locally with an upholsterer,” writes Annie in the book. Photo: Roger DaviesSoon, Annie had a growing community of social media followers—209,000 to date—privy to everything from her favorite white paint color (Farrow & Ball’s Slipper Satin) to her preferred headboard height (48 inches) and flooring material (white oak). “We started a Slipper Satin revolution,” she says.They also got a glimpse into the close relationship Annie has with both her sister, filmmaker and writer Hallie Meyers-Shyer, and their mother, whose movies, featuring homes with creamy white slipcovered sofas and massive Carrara-topped, Le Creuset–stocked kitchen islands have made her the cinematic doyenne of domestic decor bliss. The director’s sets have even spawned their own hashtag: #NancyMeyersCore.Annie Meyers-Shyer on the set of the 1984 film Irreconcilable Differences For all three women, the lines blur between real and fantasy life. Nancy’s daughters, after all, inspired the names of Lindsay Lohan’s identical twin characters in her directorial debut, The Parent Trap. Even today, every conversation seems to come back to the movies.“I keep telling her to watch the scene in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House where Myrna Loy describes this butter yellow she wants for a room,” Nancy says.“I know the quote,” Annie tells her. “I almost used it in my book.”In the movie version, Annie moves into her mother-in-law’s house and antics ensue (it’s complicated!). But in real life, Nancy was—and remains—thrilled. “I thought: Great. Great! We’ve always loved the house,” the filmmaker says of the Pennsylvania Dutch–style residence designed by Gerard Colcord, a celebrated midcentury architect of Hollywood homes, which her in-law Marcia Ziffren owned for over 20 years. “It’s very, very charming and cottagey feeling.”Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer on the Father of the Bride set with Annie Photo courtesy of Annie Meyers-ShyerShe was impressed as Annie confidently assembled a team—including the architect Brian Covington and the interior designer Mike Moser—to preserve the house and make it livable for her family. It brought back memories of the house Nancy and her then husband, Annie’s filmmaker father, the late Charles Shyer, renovated when Annie was a toddler. “We were three months in and the contractor said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve spent the entire budget,’” Nancy recalls. “It was like a bad movie. But Annie is wiser than we were. She made no big mistakes like that. And her book really guides you and gives options.”Annie, who lived in that Sherman Oaks residence from the age of two to 18, remembers it differently. “It was wonderful and cozy,” she says. “My love of homes started there.”The dreamy homes of her mother’s movie sets were also an influence. “By osmosis,” Annie says.Anyone looking for mother-daughter conflict between these two is not going to find it. They consult each other constantly. During the pandemic, Nancy, who had previously pulled back from filmmaking (“I was assuming I was retired,” she says), experienced a burst of creative inspiration and asked Annie to give her two hours over FaceTime to weigh in on some of her new ideas for movies. Nancy is now filming the project her daughter picked, tentatively titled Paris Paramount. When it comes to decorating, they are also remarkably in sync.“I could easily live with everything in her house,” Nancy says.“Same,” Annie responds. “I think our sensibilities are quite similar. I brought something over here today to ask her opinion.”A butler’s pantry was absorbed to create a larger kitchen. Photo: Roger DaviesInside the renovationAs Annie explains in the book, what was intended as a minimal renovation soon turned into something more extensive. The upstairs layout, especially, needed a rethink for a family of four since one of the three bedrooms was tucked away behind the primary bedroom, and only accessible via a back staircase. Looking back to Colcord’s original plans for the house, Covington devised a solution: removal of the back staircase and the addition of a new hallway upstairs, creating access to all three bedrooms. The family, including their sons, now 10 and 13, finally moved into the house in January 2025.A den was turned into the room Annie calls “the snug”—a cozy space where the family gathers to read and watch TV. She describes the Le Manach cut velvet fabric on the ottoman as the room's “pièce de résistance.” Photo: Roger DaviesThe new upstairs hallway connects the house’s bedrooms. Photo: Roger DaviesA former accessories editor at Harper’s Bazaar and PR executive for Chanel, Annie knows how to curate the best of the best—and how to do her homework. This Oak House is packed with everything she learned—from the recommended approach to millwork (she had the original moldings removed and replicated using specially crafted custom knives) to mood boards detailing the specific fabric choices she made in every space. Along the way, there are before-and-after floor plans, garden schemes, and a recipe for Meyers Family Hot Fudge. “I’m hopeful it’s a book for everybody,” she says.But even a master researcher needs someone they trust for a gut check. In Annie’s case, that is almost always her mother. “She would schlep here one L.L. Bean bag after another filled with fabric samples,” Nancy says. “And we would lay them all out on my dining room floor.”Indeed, Nancy herself picked the winning cover image for the book—originally an outtake, it shows Annie photographed from behind walking toward her front door. She is wearing linen J. Crew pants, her feet are bare, and her sunhat—the Vista from the brand Lack of Color—is dangling on her back. “It is adorable,” Nancy says. “I insisted.”A view of the garden Photo: Roger DaviesOne of her biggest contributions, fittingly, was her suggestion for what color to paint the kitchen. “I was trying a million samples, and I couldn’t figure it out,” Annie recalls. “And then my mom said, ‘What’s wrong with a white kitchen?’ It just clicked.”Maybe because it looked just like a movie set—from a Nancy Meyers movie.