But visitors who open a certain door find themselves in a high-tech studio that resembles a cozy living room from the 1960s or ’70s, a place to settle in for a martini or two with friends. Thousands of dollars’ worth of recording and editing equipment are there too, but are hard to notice at a glance.
“The set looks like my first apartment,” quipped actor and comedian Arsenio Hall, soon after his first visit this month. He came to the studio to record an interview and stayed to hang out for a while. Coaxing celebrities to let down their guard and linger, it turns out, is the strategy behind the informal recording and broadcasting studio.
“We wanted it to be intimate with a cool, loungy vibe,” Williams said. “It’s like coming to my house.”
The timing was right to build the hideaway studio inside of one of Southern California’s best-known hotels. As the recession hammered business and leisure travel, inns including the Four Seasons saw occupancy dip.
That has many of them looking for new sources of revenue, such as events. For instance, the $480-million Terranea Resort, which opened last June in the midst of the hotel slump, has pushed its seaside wedding venues on the bluffs of Palos Verdes. This year Terranea scored a Hollywood coup by hosting a wedding for the ABC television show “The Bachelor,” which filled nearly 275 rooms and required a multitude of meals.
The Four Seasons agreed to rent Young Hollywood three rooms, including a two-bedroom suite, for at least a year. Exact terms are confidential, but Williams said the annual price is six figures. The cost of furnishing and outfitting the studio with high-definition cameras and other equipment was in the $500,000 range, he said.
The two-bedroom suite and another guest room are now the studio and green room. Williams lives in the third room.
The Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, as the hotel is formally known, has long been a favored haunt of the entertainment industry and frequently hosts events where members of the media gather to interview stars promoting their latest movies.
“It made perfect sense for R.J. to be here,” said Mehdi Eftekari, the hotel’s general manager. “We are a hub for junket interviews.”
The fledgling studio may help the 23-year-old Four Seasons in its competition with the brand-new W Hollywood hotel to be the junket destination of choice. When the W opened this year at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, its managers showed off a large suite and outdoor deck built specifically to attract junket business.
In addition, the Four Seasons recently laid 200,000 feet of fiber optic cable to improve electronic connections and broadcasting for junkets. Eftekari declined to say how much it cost but said it was “a huge expense” to wire 3 1/2 floors of rooms including the studio, ballroom, wedding garden, business center, meeting rooms and restaurants.
The Four Seasons, Eftekari said, doesn’t know who is coming and going to Young Hollywood’s floor, though it does give Williams’ team permission to bring cameras into public areas of the hotel if they’re not intruding on other guests. It’s a rare concession.
“We have zero tolerance for paparazzi,” Eftekari said. “Security has been trained to look for cameras, telephones and little equipment” capable of taking pictures.
And he was quick to defend his hotel’s reputation for discretion.
“R.J. brings his own business,” Eftekari said. “We do not supply him with names of who is here and who is not.”
Young Hollywood’s reputation as a friendly venue works in its favor.
“They do celebrity profiles in a way that is almost always flattering to the talent,” said Jimmy Pitaro, vice president of media at Yahoo Inc. “It’s incredibly consistent with the tone of Yahoo Entertainment and Yahoo Sports, which is not mean-spirited.”
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