But Caruso still won’t shake Katzenberg’s hand.
The grudge dates back to the 2022 campaign, when Caruso says a pro-Bass political action committee backed by Katzenberg ran ads that compared him to Donald Trump. When Katzenberg approached him at a restaurant after the election, Caruso says, he refused the offered handshake and demanded a public apology. When Katzenberg tried again roughly a year later, Caruso says, he gave him the same answer.
“I said, ‘You know the rule. I’m not going to shake your hand.’”
Caruso can definitely hold a grudge, but he also seems preoccupied with whether he is, in some larger sense, a good man. His Catholic faith comes up repeatedly. He attends St. Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica, where he and his wife, Tina, were married and their children were baptized and confirmed.
At one point I remind Caruso that, in an earlier interview, he was asked which person in history he would choose to meet and he answered Jesus Christ.
So what would Jesus make of the career of a billionaire real-estate developer?
“I hope that he’s proud of me,” Caruso says. “I pray to him a lot.”
His prayers, he says, frequently circle the same questions: “Am I doing as much as I can do? Should I be doing more? How can I do more? What’s the best use of my life?”
It’s a line of questioning other people have asked him, too. Shortly after the fires, Sam Harris pressed Caruso on his podcast to consider whether someone with his fortune could be more ambitious philanthropically. I put the proposition to Caruso more crudely: Why not write a billion-dollar check, directly transform the lives of fire victims, and guarantee yourself the first line of an extremely flattering obituary?
“I wish I could,” Caruso says.
He argues that the majority of his wealth is tied up in real estate. Liquidating enough to write such a check, he says, would mean selling assets and reducing his ability to produce income and give back long term. It could also mean giving up control of his businesses. “I want this company to be dynastic,” he says.
His philanthropic work, including the Tina & Rick J. Caruso Early Education Center, which provides head start tutelage to underprivileged kids on Skid Row, predates the fires, but the disaster pushed it into a more public direction. In launching Steadfast LA, he assembled a coalition that includes Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Nicole Avant, Amazon MGM Studios chief Mike Hopkins, Gensler co-chair Andy Cohen, Banc of California CEO Jared Wolff, and executives from firms including JPMorgan and CBRE.
A year and a half after wildfires tore through Pacific Palisades, much of the neighborhood that used to support the shopping center is still empty.
