Actor and film producer Mark Wahlberg joined the growing list of A-list Hollywood celebrities fleeing California.
During an interview Tuesday on the CBS talk show “The Talk,” the movie star said he moved out of the Golden State and into Nevada to give his children “a better life.”
“I moved to California many years ago to pursue acting and I’ve only made a couple of movies in the entire time that I was there,” Wahlberg said. “So, to be able to give my kids a better life and follow and pursue their dreams, whether it be my daughter as an equestrian, my son as a basketball player, my younger son as a golfer, this made a lot more sense for us.”
Wahlberg and his wife, Rhea Durham, have two sons and two daughters.
Residents across the state have been escaping Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rule of California in droves, especially since 2020, when the Democratic leader and the primarily liberal legislature shut down the state in response to COVID. Amid high taxes already killing the middle–class, skyrocketing crime rates, and an unaffordable housing crisis — the one-party system on the West Coast essentially turned California into a feudal state, or as some conservative leaders called it, a socialist nightmare.
The Los Angeles Times cited a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which tracked data published by a moving company claiming California had an outbound move rate of approximately 56% between 2018-2019. Following the pandemic, that rate increased to nearly 60% in 2020-21.
The Times further reported that a California Department of Finance Statistics showed more than 352,000 residents packed up their belongings and set up camp elsewhere between April 2020 and January 2022.
Last April, Wahlberg put his family’s 12-bedroom/20-bathroom compound located in the ritzy Beverly Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on the market for $87.5 million, according to Yahoo News. He follows the lead of other celebrities like Katy Perry, Matthew McConaughey, and even podcaster Joe Rogan.
Wahlberg told the hosts of the show he moved to California’s neighboring state, Nevada, where he said he plans on building a studio, creating “Hollywood 2.0.”
The 51-year-old Boston native said following Nevada’s gubernatorial election next month, where incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak seeks re-election against Republican nominee Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo in the upcoming 2022 Midterms, he hopes to have a bill passed in the legislature that would grant tax credits to build out a state-of-the-art studio.
“We came here to just kind of give ourselves a new look, a fresh start for the kids, and there’s a lot of opportunity here,” he said. “I’m really excited about the future.”
Wahlberg appeared on the show to promote the second season of his television docu-series “Wahl Street,” which gives a rare look inside his personal life as he expands his empire.