After spending 13 years living in Hollywood, Hallmark star and “90210” alum Shenae Grimes-Beech says she’s never going back.
On March 15, 2026, Grimes-Beech posted an 18-minute video on her YouTube page, explaining why she “blew up my life in LA” and moved her family — husband Josh Beech and their kids, daughter Bowie and son Kingsley — to a small town in Tennessee.
Shenae Grimes-Beech Says Hollywood ‘Traumatized’ Her
In the description beneath her video, Grimes-Beech admitted that her family’s move did not bring immediate bliss because they went through some major growing pains.
She wrote, “In 2020, I made a choice that many in the entertainment industry called a mistake: I blew up my life in LA and moved my family to a small town in Tennessee. I was looking for safety, comfort, and a ‘quieter path,’ but I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock of the Bible Belt or the ‘fish out of water’ feeling of living somewhere that didn’t mirror my city-girl roots.”
Grimes-Beech appeared in 60 episodes of “Degrassi: The Next Generation” from 2006 to 2007, per IMDb, and then starred as Annie Downs on “90210” from 2008 to 2013. She starred in her first Hallmark movie in 2015, “Christmas Incorporated,” and has since starred in four others, including 2025’s “Love of the Irish.”
The actress started her candid video by stating, “Hollywood is the town that raised me. It’s where my dreams became a reality, where I found my career, and where I built the person that you think you know. But it’s also the place that traumatized me in a lot of ways. Hollywood is a place that can make you feel like the center of the universe one day and then completely worthless the next.”
Shenae Grimes-Beech Says Her Friendships in LA Were Always Competitive
HallmarkIn her March 15 video, Grimes-Beech said she spent her 20s second-guessing herself and feeling like a “has-been” every day, despite her success.
“Even friendship circles revolve around who is the most successful,” she said of forging connections in LA. “We will just kiss the [expletive] of whoever has the most money or the most power or the most fame. It becomes so normal that you don’t even take stock of how that is impacting you on, like, a mental, emotional, spiritual level.”
Between that and noticing rising crime and expenses in her family’s neighborhood, Grimes-Beech and her husband decided to pack up their “entire lives” and head to Tennessee. The couple didn’t feel immediately comfortable there, either, but have settled into a farmhouse in the countryside, documenting their renovations on social media.
Shenae Grimes-Beech Says Making Friends in Tennessee Didn’t Come Easily
Making friends in Tennessee was a bit of a challenge at the start, Grimes-Beech admitted, noting, “I’m not one to bite my tongue. I can’t just tune it out. Like, I’m not that person. I can’t just like shut off my ear holes.”
But the Toronto native said she also wanted “to be respectful of the fact that, like, I am a newcomer and I’m bringing a very different mentality to what is the norm with the majority out here.”
“We’re all different people,” she acknowledged. “But for me, like non-negotiables on a baseline like human decency level, homophobia, bigotry, discrimination, racism, sexism, not going to fly with me. If that rubs you the wrong way? Yeah, we don’t need to be friends.”
GettyGrimes-Beech said she “genuinely thought a few years ago that I would just never have friends out here,” but that she now is part of a beautiful community.
“I still don’t leave my house that often because I’m an introvert,” she quipped. “I’m an extroverted introvert, but I have wonderful friends who I really care for and I feel very seen by and it’s a really nice place to be. I’m very grateful for that.”
“The moral of the story,” Grimes-Beech concluded, “is give yourself permission to make impulsive decisions and figure it out as you go.”
