Abigail Spencer

The actress, producer, and entrepreneur discusses her creative journey from television and film to County Line Florals founder.

By Lindzi Scharf

Photography by Jenna Ohnemus Peffley & The Retaility

Abigail Spencer is ready to celebrate.

The actress – known for roles on “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Suits,” “Timeless,” and “Rectify” – is starring opposite Jon Cryer and Donald Faison in “Extended Family,” an NBC family comedy series from Mike O’Malley. She’s also in pre-production for “The Actor,” a film she’s producing with her production company, Innerlight Films, which first optioned Donald E. Westlake’s novel “Memory” seven years ago. Additionally, Spencer is thriving as the founder of County Line Florals, a flower company that pays homage to her late father, surf legend Yancy Spencer.

And to top it all off, it is Spencer’s self-proclaimed, “Forty-Wonderful birthday.” With so much in bloom, she’s gathering her nearest and dearest at a charming craftsman-style summer home on a balmy summer evening in Los Angeles to toast where she’s been and where she’s headed. Fluttering around the space in a billowing pink La Ligne dress, Spencer is feeling reflective as she preps for her big night – and even bigger year – ahead.

“Success, to me, meant being able to take my friends out to dinner for my birthday,” she says, standing on a porch overlooking three long tables that she and her County Line Florals team are decorating for the affair. “I remember the first time I was making money—not a lot, but enough—I invited all my friends out for my 18th birthday and I thought, ‘I’m going to go secretly pay the check.’ I remember thinking, ‘That is the pinnacle of success.’”

It’s a birthday tradition she’s continued ever since.

“Only now I’m bringing everyone to me,” she laughs.

Her friends can thank Kathie Lee Gifford. Spencer landed her first major acting gig after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as a member in the audience of the “Live with Regis & Kathie Lee Show.” As luck would have it, a casting director couldn’t take her eyes off Spencer and tracked her down for a role on “All My Children.”

“It’s an old school discovery story,” Spencer says, reflecting on how she booked a three-year contract on the iconic soap opera as a high school senior. “My dream was to be a working actor in New York that made my living acting and by seventeen, I had accomplished that,” she says. “But be careful what you wish for. Sometimes when you get everything that you want you’re like, ‘Wait a second...’”

Once Spencer’s contract on “All My Children” ended, she hoped to pursue Broadway and movies, but instead was advised to make a name for herself in Los Angeles, where she’s lived ever since. While Spencer acknowledges she’s lucky to be living the dream she’s had since high school, the actress admits her life looks a little different than what she’d expected as a wide-eyed teenager. “I love Julia Roberts,” she explains. “I think she’s one of our great movie stars and I remember feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m not Julia Roberts by the time I’m 21. What else is there? Is it over?’”

Spencer eventually found her footing and a memorable role on “Mad Men” followed by a slew of notable television and film projects. However, her life was upended when her father passed away unexpectedly. “It was a defining moment,” she says. “I had just gotten off of ‘Mad Men.’ My career was on the upswing. I was traveling. I was a new mother.”

Her grief led to an interest in flower arranging. Spencer decided to pursue it professionally with the launch of County Line Florals in 2020.

“I have a real entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “I’m a starter. I don’t necessarily want to run things, but I believe in hiring the best people to run things and keep them going and make them function well.”

County Line Florals’ work is on full display as Spencer and her employees are running around, putting the finishing touches on every square inch of her eclectic home, which was built by architect Arthur Benton in 1905. “It’s a small but mighty team,” Spencer says, as the group carefully lay tea light candles and flowers throughout the 13,125 square foot space. Outside a custom glass conservatory, a woman is completing arrangements while Carole King’s voice fills the living room courtesy of a record player crooning “So Far Away.” Nearby, flowers are strung on a faux moose mantle while disco balls glisten from the ceiling for an after-dinner dance party with Spencer’s friend, DJ Kelly Cole.

While the soiree is being held under the guise of celebrating Spencer, it becomes clear her intention is to shine a light on the work her team is doing while honoring those who have been on this journey with her since her days as an aspiring Broadway performer in New York.

“I would have planned my life so differently,” Spencer admits. “But I’m grateful that none of my plans worked out. It’s deepened my life and it’s made my life so much more interesting.”

GROWING UP

Spencer grew up in Gulf Breeze, a small town on the gulf coast of Florida. “I started surfing when I was three,” she says. “My dad was like, ‘Oh my God. I’ve given birth to the first female world champion surfer.’” She lets out her signature hearty laugh. “I really took to it, but my mom said, ‘No, you didn’t. She will not get skin cancer. She will not be in the water all the time and she will not be a professional athlete.’ So my dad put me in dance class. He called it ‘land surfing.’ He said, ‘It’s the closest thing to surfing on land.’ I would also watch dancers [on television] in my living room and would memorize the dances. I’d play things over and over to teach myself how to dance.”

Spencer also became interested in music. “My mother is an incredible singer,” she says. “She plays seven different instruments. She started to give me voice lessons.”

From there, Spencer began participating in local pageants and talent competitions. “That's all that is available to you in a small southern town of three stoplights,” she says. “My grandmother put me in my first pageant when I was three and I won Little Miss Gulf Breeze. That's when I was on the stage for the first time and I'll never forget it. I don't recall what I said at three, but whatever I said, it brought the house down. Everyone laughed and I remember thinking, ‘I like that. I want more of that.’”

When Spencer was eleven, she auditioned for the new Mickey Mouse Club. “I'd been invited to be a part of the final audition in Orlando – the year of Keri Russell, Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears,” Spencer says. “My family was headed to Orlando, we were about to get in the car for the weekend and my parents said, ‘We’re not going. We’re not moving to Orlando. You’re not going to be a professional kid actor. When you’re 18 years old, you can go do that. But we’re not uprooting the family.’ That was tough news for me. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. That could have [been my big break]—’ You know, like a sliding door, ‘What if I was on the Mickey Mouse Club?’”

Spencer turned her attention to community theater. “At fourteen, I met Ann Reinking,” she says. “I became her apprentice at the Broadway Theatre [Project for a] summer program [called The Musical Theatre Project of Tampa]. It was nice to get professional training. I also started getting more involved in my school drama program. My teacher Margie Timmons [at Gulf Breeze High School] invested in me and trained me to be a working actor.”

All the while, surfing remained a huge part of Spencer’s childhood. “I grew up in surf shops,” she says, explaining that both of her brothers are professional surfers and that they all worked in her father’s surf shop in Florida growing up. “I worked in his surf shop, too, but not for very long. My dad said I was costing him too much money because I was too honest when people wanted to buy things. I was like, ‘That looks terrible on you. You shouldn’t buy that,’ or I was coming home with so much stuff from the surf shop that he was like, ‘You cannot work there.’ But I grew up going with him to the beach, watching him shape surfboards, the ritual of getting the van ready, and going on surf trips. I’m really connected to that culture and world.”

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

A trip to New York City during Spencer’s senior year of high school would forever change the trajectory of her life. “When I was in New York auditioning for school, I was sitting in the audience at the ‘[Live with] Regis and Kathie Lee’ show,” Spencer recalls. “My parents surprised me with tickets. My dad was Kathie Lee Gifford’s first love and talked about him and wished him a happy birthday on the air publicly every year. My dad was close with her family. I’d never met her, but they surprised me with a fun, first trip to New York thing—to go see the show.”

“Five minutes into her morning banter, Kathie Lee said, ‘Hey everyone, there’s a special guest in the audience today,’” Spencer remembers. “I’m looking around, like, ‘Is it David Letterman?’ because I knew they were friends and I was obsessed with David Letterman at the time. I was looking around and then she said, ‘Everyone meet Abigail Spencer. Abigail, tell everyone what you’re doing in New York today.’ I felt like I was in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Giant cameras with red lights were coming towards me.”

Spencer remembers being stunned but says she somehow managed to keep her cool. “I was seventeen, green, and had no fear,” she says, laughing. “I thought, ‘I’m going for it.’ I always joke that my hair arrived and then I arrived five minutes later because I had so much hair.”

Spencer’s voice intensifies as she sets the scene. “So, I tossed my giant southern curly hair over my shoulder and I looked into the camera…” It’s as if she is that precocious seventeen-year-old all over again. Her voice projects a confident, naïve innocence with delivery likely reminiscent of Spencer’s days on the pageant circuit. “I said, 'Well, everyone, I'm a singer and an actress and a dancer and someday I'm going to be a director and a producer…'”

It’s as if she’d been preparing for that moment her whole life.

“I just went for it,” she laughs.

Unbeknownst to Spencer, Gifford’s assistant decided to call around to the network’s various New York-based casting directors to see if anyone happened to be tuned into the show. “Judy Blye Wilson, the casting director of ‘All My Children’ was watching the live feed,” she says.

Spencer then switches into an old Hollywood-esque voice as she channels Wilson: “She was like, ‘I’m so charmed by that girl that’s in the audience talking.’”

The next day, (“my second day in New York—ever,” Spencer says,) Wilson and Spencer had a general meeting before returning home to Gulf Breeze.

“Judy kept thinking of me for a role on the show,” Spencer explains. “She kind of chased me down in Gulf Breeze. She called me…”

Spencer slips back into the old-timey voice, as she recalls Wilson saying, “'I just can’t get you out of my mind for this new role on the show. Could you come up to New York and audition?’”

Spencer then slips into a deeper voice—one that isn’t her own. “I was like, ‘Judy—’ while I’m smoking a long cigarette. ‘I’m playing Rizzo in Grease. I’m doing a one-act festival. I just got into Carnegie Mellon. I have no time.’”

She laughs. “Carnegie Mellon was my first choice and I got in. My class was Josh Groban, Leslie Odom Jr., Griffin Matthews, Katy Mixon, Megan Hilty, Josh Gad… I was going to Carnegie Mellon,” she says. “But I did send Judy a thank you note—as any good southern girl [would do]—and I was very grateful that she thought of me for the opportunity.”

But Wilson called again and asked her to make a tape. She insisted that Spencer was right for the role. “It was spring of my senior year in 1999,” Spencer explains. “I was still a senior in high school. I hadn’t graduated yet. I was fully going to Carnegie Mellon by this point.”

Television hadn’t been a goal for Spencer, but she agreed to film herself. “I’d only done plays,” she says. “I thought I might do movies eventually, but I was a theater actor. Judy sent the sides, which she faxed to my dad’s surf shop, and I had to cut each page up and take off the perforated edges.”

Spencer borrowed her family’s “giant VHS camera” and went to her local recreation center where she put herself on tape.

“Three days later, I got a call that they wanted to fly me up for a screen test,” she says. “I said, ‘I will come if you fly my dad up with me and you take us to a Broadway show because he’s never been to New York and he’s never been to a Broadway show.’ That was my negotiation and Judy laughed. I was underage. I had to bring a parent, but I didn't know that. So my dad and I went up and we had three glorious days in New York.”

“I screen-tested against seven other girls,” she remembers. “One of the girls had just graduated from Carnegie Mellon. They were professional actors. I called ahead and I had gifts for each girl. Remember Caboodles? I had little Caboodles filled with these dissolvable mints that I loved. They were good luck gifts for all the girls. I was such a theatre nerd, you know? Like, ‘We’re all in this together. It doesn’t matter who gets the role. We're all winners.'”

Three days later, Spencer had the job. “I had to call Carnegie Mellon and say, ‘Hey, I just got offered a three-year contract on a soap opera. What do you think?’” she says. “They said, ‘You have to do it. You come to school to get a job and if you have a job, then you have to take it and we’ll hold your spot.’ They held my spot and then I still got to know my class. They would come to New York and visit me. I met Leslie Odom Jr. at my Carnegie Mellon audition, so we’ve become very dear friends. Griffin Matthews is still one of my best friends. So I moved to New York and I thought, 'Okay. New York. I'm a New Yorker. Once, I'm done with the soap opera, I’m going straight to stage.’”

ALL MY CHILDREN

Spencer spent three years on “All My Children” playing Becca Tyree. “It’s an incredible on-camera training ground," she says of her years working on the soap opera. “I know a set and I became a workhorse.”

She credits her then-co-star Kelly Ripa with being a monumental part of her professional journey. “Kelly Ripa was a huge part of me believing in myself," she says. "She pulled me aside and she said, 'You have to get out of here.' I was like, 'I'm so bad?' She was like, 'No, you're talented and you need to go off and not stay here forever. You can do anything and it will be tempting to stay here. Do not stay here.'”

Spencer says she is also appreciative of longtime “All My Children” star Michael Knight’s support. “He believed in me too and introduced me to his acting teacher who helped me tremendously in New York,” she says.

During her time on the soap, a film opportunity emerged. “They wanted me to be the lead of ‘Coyote Ugly’ when I was eighteen,” Spencer says. “I was up for that role before they found Piper [Perabo]. They were going to fly me out to L.A. and ‘All My Children’ wouldn’t let me out of my contract to do the movie.”

Spencer completed her contract, then parted ways with the show to pursue Broadway. However, she struggled to land work. “It is difficult to get a job in the theatre as a soap opera actor,” she says. “There was a real stigma. It was like, ‘She was on a soap opera; she can’t act.’ Even though, fantastic actors [have come from that world]—Julianne Moore, Demi Moore—all the Moores.” She laughs. “Anybody named Moore has been on a soap opera. Nathan Fillion, who is a friend of mine, was on ‘One Life to Live.’”

She continues, “When I couldn’t get a job in the theatre, I was visiting L.A. because my little brother was on the junior pro tour. My family was in Southern California in San Clemente, where we grew up going my whole life because we would take long surf trips. While I was out here [in Los Angeles], my then agent at the time set me up on a general meeting with the head of casting at Fox. Her name was Pauline O’con.”

Spencer remembers thinking, “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t live in L.A. I was in this meeting and Pauline did not look at me the whole time. I was like, ‘This meeting is going terrible.’ Then all of a sudden, she looked at me and she said, ‘You have to move to L.A. If you want to go back to the theatre one day, you have to build a career in L.A. because that's what's happening now. They're casting well-known people for movies and television and theatre and that's what's going to happen. You have to make a name for yourself in L.A.’”

Back in New York, Spencer kept thinking about what O’con had suggested. “It stuck with me,” she says. “I couldn't get a job in the theatre because of the soap opera stigma. I thought, ‘Alright, I'm going to hang out in L.A.’”

THE EARLY DAYS OF LOS ANGELES

It took time for Spencer to find her footing once she arrived. “I was kind of meandering,” she says. “And, by the way, as I should have because I was 21 years old by the time I got off the soap.”

Spencer spent the time soul-searching. “I was a nanny; I started a band,” she says. “I couldn’t get an acting job, but I wasn’t seeking it out. I was doing theatre in L.A. I felt lost. Then the manager and my agent at the time called me and they said they got me an audition for a pilot. Jeanie Bacharach was the casting director and it was for a half-hour single-camera comedy from the ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’ writers and Bryan Gordon was the co-creator and the director. John Higgins was the star of it with Kenan [Thompson] from SNL. They said, ‘There’s this comedy. It’s like a hybrid, talking heads. It’s a new form of comedy and we think you should [audition].’”

Spencer admits she needed convincing and remembers saying, “Guys, I’m taking a break. I couldn’t get a job in the theatre. I just got off the soap.” She pauses. “I had a band, you know?” She laughs. “They were like, 'No, no, no. Just go on this one audition. We think you're perfect for this part.' So I went into Jeanie at 8:30 am at CBS Radford. After I did the audition, Jeanie said, ‘Can you come back in an hour?’ I came back and then she had me read again and then she said, ‘Can you wait here for a second?’ Then she brought me upstairs into a room of eighty-five people. I auditioned again. I had just tested for the studio. I got a call later that day to have a network test. By the end of the week, I had the pilot.”

She says the project was ahead of its time with Mark Burnett producing. “This was his first foray into scripted television post-‘Survivor’ and before ‘The Apprentice,’” she says. “It was a National Lampoon-esque family stumbling through Europe. It was called ‘Are We There Yet?’ It was so funny. It was before ‘The Office.’ It was talking heads. The camera would follow us around like it was real, so it had a little bit of that docu-series [feel]. It was the first one, the original, but it did not get picked up.”

So it was back to square one – a song and dance Spencer soon became accustomed to – auditioning year after year for pilot season. “I did a pilot every year after that,” she says. “I was very, very lucky.”

Spencer felt grateful to continually book work – even if her pilots weren’t always picked up. “Since that [comedy] pilot, I got swept up in beautiful dramas,” she says. “All the pilots I did were dramas. Because in classical pilot season, they used to cast all the dramas first. So January-February was drama and then they didn’t cast comedy until March-April and it used to be probably 150 pilots a season, so after that year, I got cast in a drama every season first. So I never made it to comedy even though I’ve always [loved doing comedy].”

THE DRAMATIC ERA

By 2009, Spencer hit her stride when she landed a reoccurring role on “Mad Men,” as Suzanne Farrell, a love interest to Jon Hamm’s Don Draper.

“‘Mad Men’ was the turning point,” Spencer says. “In my late twenties and my thirties, I caught a wave of television because that's where the movies are now, right? We still have our big blockbusters, but the nuanced material is in series form and on television.”

In 2013, Spencer starred on the critically acclaimed series “Rectify” as Amantha Holden and on 2016's "Timeless” as Lucy Preston. In between both series, she had memorable parts on hit series like 2015’s “True Detective” as well as reoccurring roles on “Suits” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” She also had notable opportunities in films including 2011’s “Cowboys & Aliens,” 2013’s “Oz the Great and Powerful,” and 2014’s “This is Where I Leave You,” the latter of which left a lasting impression on Spencer who had the opportunity to work with Jane Fonda.

“She is the most curious person I’ve ever met in my life,” Spencer says. “Jane Fonda showed me how to be deeply curious. She’s one of my heroes. She was asking me [about my experience with television]. ‘Rectify’ had just premiered. The day we had the table read [for ‘This is Where I Leave You,’] I was featured in the New York Times for being a part of the golden age of television – coming off of ‘Mad Men’ and going into this other series ‘Rectify.’ She was considering ‘Grace and Frankie,’ so she was like, ‘How do you do television? What’s television like?’ We would sit down and I would tell her because I had been in the television world. And I do feel like I caught a wave, you know?”

Fonda’s curiosity inspired Spencer to follow her own curiosity – even when it led Spencer to unlikely places – like the launch of County Line Florals.

COUNTY LINE FLORALS

When Spencer was twenty-nine, tragedy struck. It was the height of her career.

“I was traveling from movie to movie and my father came to visit me in California for Valentine’s Day,” she says, explaining that he went surfing on his last day in town at one of his favorite surf spots, County Line in Malibu. “My son was napping. He was two, so it was that age where they take their one big long nap in the middle of the day. My dad called me, and I said, ‘Dad, stay out surfing. You don’t have to come back.’ That’s all a surfer wants—is to not have to stop surfing.”

Her father said he was having a heart attack. He passed away ten minutes later.

“He was such an icon in the surf world,” Spencer says, explaining she was blown away by the number of people who sent flowers in his honor. “The incoming love and support [meant a lot].”

As she navigated her newfound grief, Spencer often turned to flower arranging as a source of comfort and a means of soothing herself. “I leaned into flowers as my way of showing my thoughtfulness," she says, explaining she took arrangement classes in New York. “I wanted to honor my father’s connection to the surf world. I kept thinking, ‘What can I do with elevated surf culture and with this love of florals?’”

Then, as she was filming the show “Reprisal,” the concept for County Line Florals came to her. “I say this a lot about my acting career—it’s like a lifetime of preparation for a moment of opportunity,” she says. “It’s a little similar in this regard, but it was probably a lifetime of trauma for a moment of action.”

Spencer purchased an old surf truck to turn it into a mobile flower shop. She remembers thinking, “I’m going to bring the surf/floral shop to my friends on their sets,” she says. “It’ll be this beautiful, fun thing and I’ll be able to design the bouquets and it’ll be like a coffee truck or an ice cream truck for florals.”

Once “Reprisal” was on the air, Spencer began renovating a 1965 VW Transporter and started tinkering with a company logo. “Then something called COVID started happening overseas,” she says. “I went to Paris Fashion Week and while I was in Paris, the world started to lock down. I got back to L.A. with the truck still in the shop. A week later, we were in lockdown. All my productions—everything was on hold and I got to be with myself and be home and I turned to flowers to soothe myself.”

She called friends who had all worked with flowers in some capacity along the way. “I started designing,” she says, “and brought a bunch of people to my backyard because we could be outside together. I made thirty-six bouquets and didn’t tell anyone I was doing it and delivered it to my friends.”

She delivered them all the same day, then created an Instagram page and website. She says she figured, “‘Why don’t I start this little thing and see what happens?’” A week later, she sent out fifty more bouquets to friends. “The response was overwhelming,” she says.

Suddenly she had a business and people were placing orders.

“I was able to find this incredible team of floral designers who were also thinking about their lives differently,” she explains. “Everything had been so event-based and they were like, ‘If events go away, what is there [to do]?’ and my productions were all on hold, so [the question became], ‘How do we pivot?’ We became part of the pandemic pivot. And then I got the call, ‘Hey, the truck is ready.’ I was like, ‘Well, production is off the table for the foreseeable future…’”

Spencer named the truck Betty. “Every time, I looked at the truck, I thought, ‘She’s such a Betty,’” she says, explaining that the name is also a nod to her father’s profession. “Betty is a 1960 surf term for a beautiful woman.”

County Line Florals started small by doing mobile truck pop-ups in Montecito and throughout Southern California. “We took Betty out for the first time for Father’s Day [2020] in Ojai,” Spencer says, explaining the truck started being invited to store openings, coffee shops, and outdoor drive-in movie premieres. “People were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen anything like it.’”

The positive response propelled the business forward. She remembers thinking, “This has been following me around for years and I have to pay attention. I have to listen to this.” Spencer expanded her team and grew the business beyond the mobile truck to include a membership delivery service. Eventually, Spencer opened a flagship location at Free Market in Playa Vista, California. “We got invited into a collective retail experience, which is owned by Raan and Lindsay Parton,” she says, sharing that the opportunity felt kismet. “They’re longtime family friends of mine from way back in the surf days.”

While Spencer has spent her life and career in front of the camera, she began to realize how much she appreciated the anonymity that came with running the business. “I think when you’re an actor or when you’re a public person in any regard, you become the product,” she says. “Sometimes, not on purpose, with no ill will, you become the product and your humanity gets pushed to the side. It’s almost like they’re not connected anymore and I like having something where I’m like, ‘Look, I made this. Look over here. This is for you.’ I love that. Instead of me always being the product. That’s something I didn’t even realize that I needed.”

FOLLOWING HER CURIOSITY

Spencer also has a production company called Innerlight Films, which has a series of projects at different stages of development. “Creating is what I care most about and I’m super into whatever form that comes in,” she says. “I’m producing a feature and we’re in pre-production in Budapest. I’ve been putting this movie together for seven years. It’s called ‘The Actor’ and Neon is releasing it. André Holland and Gemma Chan are our leads. I’ve put this whole movie together with Duke Johnson, my producing partner, who directed ‘Anomalisa.’ We optioned the book together. We’ve developed the script together.”

“That’s been a labor of love,” Spencer continues. “Duke and I met on an airplane twenty years ago and he’s one of my lifelong friends. We’re pursuing our dream of making movies with soul together. That’s been years in the making. We're so excited about where we are now with it and where we’re going.”

Spencer says she sees similarities between producing and her floral business. “My mom jokes that I came out of the womb producing,” Spencer says. “She said when I was two and three, I would greet everyone at the door, bring them in, ask them if they needed anything, get them something. I was attuned to hosting on some level and it’s interesting because now that I am producing, I look at them the same way. Hosting is producing is hospitality. A big part of producing to me is the hospitality piece of it.”

Of her various interests, Spencer says, “Being creative is everything to me.” She adds, “I love starting things—whether it’s a movie [or another creative endeavor]. I’m producing this movie. Will I produce another movie? I don’t know. I just have to make this movie.” She pauses. “Will I start another business? I don’t know. I just had to do County Line Florals. I do not have a plan. And I love it.”

A TURNING POINT

Spencer’s career has come full circle. For the first time since her early twenties, she is the lead of a half-hour comedy series called “Extended Family” on NBC opposite veterans Jon Cryer and Donald Faison. “It’s so wild,” she says. “Twenty years later, I’m finally back in comedy. We shot the pilot at CBS Radford – where I auditioned for [my first comedy all those years ago]. I get to be part of the heart of the show and I get to share it, but it also gets to be mine. It’s so exciting.”

Despite having been a guest star on various comedies over the years – including “How I Met Your Mother” and David Wain’s “Childrens Hospital” – Spencer had to prove herself through a series of auditions to land the part of Julia on Mike O’Malley’s NBC comedy “Extended Family” about a divorced couple who continue living together while raising children.

“Now all I want to do is multi-cam,” she says. “I was sitting with a producer, Tom Werner, and Scott Herbst at Lions Gate. I did ‘Mad Men’ with them, but they didn't know I did comedy. They were like, 'This is a total one-eighty. What a revelation. We can't believe it.' It’s so fun to be twenty-three years into my career and be like, ‘Yep. I do this. I’m doing a comedy,’ and to still be in discovery.”

Guests are now trickling in downstairs as Spencer gets ready upstairs with three girlfriends keeping her company. “It’s an interesting moment where a lot of things that have been brewing or things that I’ve longed for are coming to the surface all at the same time,” she says, between applying mascara and curling her hair. “I think it does speak to going into my Forty-Wonderful year. It’s fun to be surprised and keep being curious.”

In some ways, perhaps Spencer’s taken the surf lessons she learned from her father and has applied them to ride the wave of life's unexpected uncertainties.

“If I had planned my life, I would have chosen to be on the ‘Mickey Mouse Club,’” she reflects. “I would have gone and done Broadway shows. I still want to do Broadway, but that’s what’s so exciting. That’s still all available. I really feel that.” She pauses. “But I would have planned my life so differently. I would have said, ‘Mickey Mouse Club and movies.’ I would have chosen to do ‘Coyote Ugly.’”

“I would never have planned my dad dying so suddenly when I was 29,” she continues. “But look at what has been birthed from all of that pain. I would never have chosen a lot of things that have unfolded in my life and I am at a space where I’m just so grateful.”

HOW SHE LIVES…

Spencer takes us inside a recent County Line Florals-hosted dinner party at her summer home in Los Angeles. “We’ve been wanting to throw our first full hospitality experience as a team,” she explains, “because we feel like we’re storytellers and producers, and everybody has a background in that on the team. We wanted to put all of that together.”

THE HOUSE PARTY

“We wanted to celebrate the summer home and experiment with the house party,” she says of throwing a dinner and disco dance party for friends. “I thought, ‘Is that a thing? Can we do that?’ In L.A., things close so early. We don’t have that European culture where you tumble out the door and go out. We have to be so much more intentional about it in L.A.”

FINDING A (RE)PURPOSE

“We want to be conscious when we’re doing a big photo shoot,” she says, explaining she repurposed flowers from her company’s fall/winter campaign, which was photographed the day before, for her dinner party. “That’s one of the deeper explorations, 'How do we spread more joy and be less wasteful?' I thought, ‘Alright, let’s do our shoot and have it lead into an event for my Forty-Wonderful.”

THE FLORISTAS

“It was all hands on deck,” she says. “Everyone on the team does everything. But I would say we had four floristas managing all of that. We’re so lucky that we’re in the groove.”

THE TEAM

Spencer says she’s eager to explore bigger ideas and themes through her work with County Line Florals. “Something I’ve taken seriously as an actor on my shows is morale,” she says. “There are all these post-pandemic explorations. People feel like, ‘I don’t just work for money. Money is not enough. It’s the people. It’s the process. It’s the product. And I have to have two out of three of those to feel like I’m growing and that I’m content in my work life, you know?’” She and her team have been reading Danny Meyer’s ‘Setting the Table’ for inspiration as their hospitality business grows. “I think he is probably the leader of hospitality.”

THE SEATING ARRANGEMENTS

“The thing that I belabored the most was the seating arrangements,” Spencer says. “I had printouts and maps made. I changed it twelve times. It’s a ceremony to me. Yes, the food and the florals and the music [is important]. One of the things we were talking about was, ‘Could everyone feel what was about to happen next without it feeling forced?’ We talked about all that and then I said, ‘Okay, guys. I’m only going to be thinking about the seating chart now.’ You guys run with everything else. All I’m going to be thinking about is where everyone is sitting. To me, that’s where the real magic happens. I also didn’t want anyone to feel like they were in middle school—like in the lunch room, ‘I don’t know where to sit.’ There’s a chemistry to seating and conversation.”

THE FOOD

Grilled branzino and 18hr braised beef brisket was on the menu. “I’m lucky that Jessica Lopez, our head of florals, her husband [Richie Lopez] is a fabulous chef,” Spencer says, noting the the butter lettuce salad with vegan ranch and garbanzo stew were among her favorite dishes. “They traveled the world together throwing events. They met on a cruise ship at a big event where he was the chef, and she was running the florals.” Other dishes included baba ghanouj and quinoa flatbread; Valencia Farms tomatoes, avocado mousse, purple basil; and coal roasted baby butternut squash with chimichurri, green onion ash.

THE TABLES

“For the tables, we wanted to keep it simple,” she says. “You have to consider, ‘How many people? What is the setting?’ We didn’t want the table settings to be the main event. We wanted it to be a part of a larger concept of the entire house and the entire experience. We had so much food going [around family style], and we didn’t want to be taking things off the table. So we kept it much more clean with an olive branch, but a little bit wild. You still want it to feel like you came over to someone’s house, and they threw it together.”

THE BEVERAGES

Rêveuse, El Vino, Ghia, Westbourne, Cincoro, and Bev were among the brands and beverage companies served during the dinner. “I always want to bring together female-founded companies that we can introduce people to,” she says. “I like for there to be some discovery and to shine a light on companies that I am excited about.”

THE SETTING

“I love to mix and match—a lot of glasses and drinks,” Spencer says. “It makes me feel more at ease—like I’m not going to mess something up.”

A RETURN TO NORMALCY

It’s been a minute since Spencer has been able to celebrate her birthday with a large group of friends. “During the first year of the pandemic, we had a social distance girls yoga gathering in my backyard,” she says. “The second year, I took myself to Onsite, an emotional wellness retreat, and spent a week there for my 40th. This summer, I thought, ‘It’s time to travel again. It’s time to get out there, and it’s time to move the energy.’”

THE GUEST LIST

Close friends Rose Tutera, Charmaine DeGraté, and Nasim Pedrad kept Spencer company as she got ready. Griffin Matthews, Mike O’Malley, Janina Gavankar, and Heidi Merrick were also among the guests at the dinner. “Griffin Matthews is still one of my best friends,” Spencer says. “We met twenty-three years ago.” She says the group included “people in my life who had walked on so many different legs of the journey with me. It was a moment.”

THE INTUITIVE GUEST

“I met Shannon [Cooley] at The Golden Door, a retreat that’s been around since the seventies that I’ve always wanted to try in San Diego,” Spencer says. “She is their tarot intuitive. I was so struck by her. That session was such a big part of growth for me this year. I trust her. I was going to just invite her to the dinner because she and I have become friendly and we share friends. She put me on a friend date with someone else and we’ve become friends. Then I was like, ‘What a good gift to everyone.’ Conversation and transformation are gifts that you give your guests. So I thought, ‘Alright, people are coming into an experience… how will they leave? Will they leave with a different point of view? Will they leave with some insight? Or do they have a question where they want some clarity?’”

THE PARTING GIFT

Spencer likes sending guests home with bouquets. “It’s something tangible that commemorates the evening,” she says. “That way everyone gets to take a piece of it home with them. Also, what I love about flowers is you can dry them, or they can go back into the earth. You can put them into your landscaping bin, and it’s not another thing you have to have in your house.”

THE HOME AWAY FROM HOME

“Being an actor, part of my job is being able to make home wherever I go,” Spencer says, explaining the summer home is a temporary abode for her and her son before the school year.

THE RETREAT LIFE

“I’m interested in retreat culture,” she says. “I’m researching what it means to retreat and how to bring more retreat to everyday life. [I’m exploring], ‘What are we retreating from, and how can we invite retreat into the day-to-day?’ So I’ve been going to a lot of retreats over the past couple of years.”

THE THEORY

“Something that struck me this last year was something Brené Brown talks about,” Spencer says. “Adam Grant talks about this too. For real healing to happen, when you open yourself up to therapy or vulnerability and you work through something, and you have a therapy session—there’s a lot of research [that shows] – when you create something at the end of it, it fuels the work. Then it’s a little bit more integrated into your being.”

A LOVE OF HATS

Spencer often wears hats in her personal life as well as in imagery for County Line Florals. Most often, it’s a design by L.A. designer Janessa Leone. “Janessa is a dear friend of mine and a beautiful hatmaker,” Spencer says. “I have a hat obsession. She is a very thoughtful designer, and her collections are named after women she loves – as are mine. I have a bouquet called The Janessa.”

THE WINTER/HOLIDAY COLLECTION

“We plan our collections like a fashion company,” Spencer explains. “They’re like dress drops.” County Line Florals’ aesthetic is, she says, “focused on California – even though our holiday collection is inspired by my trip to London and Paris this summer.” She adds, “We approach everything like a fashion collection. So it’s like, ‘Here’s the collection. We’ve done our due diligence around the seasonal blooms. Here’s the vibe.’”

HER STYLE

“Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I designed all my clothes growing up,” Spencer says, clad in a look by La Ligne. “My mother made them, but I designed them all, and I’ve always been interested in design. I’m always a co-creator and collaborator with all of my characters, and I’m involved in the aesthetics of storytelling. It’s a deep passion of mine.”

Event production by the County Line Florals team, which includes Emily Perry, Ryan Dwyer, Jessica Lopez, Molly Root, Sunny Hernandez, Sally Darquea, & Benjamin Yee; Winter/holiday collection imagery with Spencer features hair by Dallin James and make-up by Phoebe Ogan.