Matt Bomer is funny. Quite funny, in fact.
You’d be forgiven for not really associating the “White Collar” and “Fellow Travelers” actor with having a funny bone, though.
“I have friends who I went to college with who were shocked when I immediately started working in drama,” he tells me. “They’re like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’”
Which, to be fair, may be what fans and critics alike are asking themselves as they see Bomer in ads all over the city for Hulu’s latest multi-cam sitcom, “Mid-Century Modern.”
In the show, out Friday, Bomer joins Nathan Lane, Nathan Lee Graham and the late Linda Lavin in a Palm Springs-set comedy created by “Will & Grace” duo Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. The premise is simple: grieving the loss of their beloved friend George, Bunny (Lane) asks his friends Arthur (Graham) and Jerry (Bomer) to come live with him and his mother, Sybil (Lavin), in his lavish Dinah Shore-inspired desert home.
Between the laugh track, the pratfalls and the quippy dialogue (“This is Palm Springs — this place is so gay even the trees are named Joshua!”) the project is a left-field turn for an actor who’s cut his teeth playing wounding and wounded queer characters in projects like “The Normal Heart,” “The Boys in the Band” and “Doom Patrol.”
As we sit down for coffee at Café Gratitude in Larchmont on a warm, sunny Sunday, Bomer is candid about what first drew him to “Mid-Century Modern.”
“I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve gotten to do these beautiful roles that explored repression,” he says. “I wouldn’t trade that for the world, and I hope that I get to do more of them someday. But after ‘Fellow Travelers,’ I remember thinking, I have to do comedy. I have to laugh. I need joy. And so I guess it started from a really selfish place.”
The original pitch for “Mid-Century Modern” was “the gay ‘Golden Girls.’” The pilot script imagined three older gay men living together in Palm Springs and creating a chosen family, not unlike the one depicted in that iconic (and, for many, already quite gay-coded) ’80s sitcom set in Miami. But as Mutchnick and Kohan were discussing casting for the role of Jerry, fellow producer Ryan Murphy added an unexpected name into the mix: Bomer.
Lane first met Bomer years ago when his publicist, Simon Hall, began dating the actor (the two have since wed). “You can never complain about anything for the rest of your life,” Lane remembers quipping at Hall then, recalling how charming and delightful Bomer had come across. But the idea of bringing in a younger actor into the mix — Bomer is 47, whereas Lane is 69 and Graham is 56 — felt like it would irrevocably alter the premise of the show.
“I was like, ‘Oh, what? Am I going to be his grandfather?’” says Lane with practiced, self-deprecating mockery. “Why are you going to do that to me? But [Max and David] had worked with Matt on ‘Will and Grace,’ and loved working with him. I thought about it, and I was a little concerned. It’s like, are we the Golden Girls? Or are we not?”
It was a fair question, one both creators wrestled with.
“Max and I talked for a bit, and we said, ‘You know what? Let’s make him 63 and one of the enduring annoyances of all the friends is that he looks like he’s 45,’” Kohan says. “But pretty soon we abandoned that idea because it’s a one-joke gimmick.”
Instead, they turned Jerry into a younger boyfriend who was adopted into the friend group even after his relationship with George ended. Suddenly, Jerry’s wide-eyed optimism, wrapped in a puppyish wonderment, was a matter of orientation and generation alike.
A lapsed Mormon who greets every day with a sunny disposition (and in many a tight T-shirt and short shorts), Jerry is the unsuspecting heart of the show. That helps balance Arthur’s dry humor, Bunny’s frantic antics and Sybil’s deliciously cutting demeanor.
The writers modeled Jerry on characters like Rose Nylund, Edith Bunker and Woody Boyd. And so, in the run-up to production, Bomer did his requisite research, approaching it with his characteristic discipline. “I only allowed myself three episodes of “The Golden Girls,” three episodes of “All in the Family,” and three episodes of “Cheers” (the season Woody joined),” he says.
Only three? “Well, I wanted to be influenced by and pay homage to, but not copy,” he adds.
Whether having meltdowns over pickleball matches or swooning over Donny Osmond — not to mention dancing a fool to Salt-N-Pepa songs and flirting up a storm with a hunky young suitor — Bomer’s Jerry is at once flighty and grounded. Which is fitting, considering he’s a flight attendant.
“That says everything about him,” Bomer says. “He’s oftentimes the impetus for them all to get out in the world and do something. He doesn’t want to just sit and stagnate in the desert. He wants them to have this exciting life and go to Fire Island or go to a concert. He’s oftentimes the one that gets them into harebrained circumstances.”
The title may hearken back to decades long gone, but there’s something contemporary about “Mid-Century Modern.” This is not, as Bomer tells me, “your mom and dad’s multicam.” “The characters talk like people I know talk,” he says. “And it is not afraid to lean into R-rated content and show our people as truly multifaceted.”
But even as the pilot episode sets up a “Gay-December” romance and has characters talking about PrEP and promiscuity alike, there was one joke that proved to be too racy: It involved drag stalwart Coco Peru (as a motelier), a vulnerable Jerry, and a drink that’s a play on a gin fizz. It was also Bomer’s favorite bit from that first episode.
“Jerry’s the kind of character who’s so gracious and kind and positive on the outside,” he says. “But if he looks under the hood too much, he can break down really easily. And he’s having one of those moments where Arthur is asking him to look into himself a little bit. So he has this meltdown where he spills the drink all over himself.”
Muthnick and Kohan were just as sad to see the bit go because it captured in miniature the comedic acrobatics Bomer is called on to perform throughout the show’s first season.
“I sometimes say that Matt is a triple Lutz performer,” Mutchnick notes. “The degree of difficulty is very high. He has what’s on the page, and then he has to do something physical. And then this actor is so talented that he puts some other spin on top of it. That’s a trick that gets high marks.”
As Graham puts it, Bomer “has this ability to embarrass himself and to be completely open and be completely vapid. But he plays that innocence so well.”
Nevertheless, sometimes a high-scoring trick has to get the ax.
“It was a concession to the studio,” Kohan says.
But the fact that it was written and performed at all — it nabbed quite an audience laugh, as they recall — signals just how forward-thinking “Mid-Century Modern” was designed to be. And it’s why, after spending years in period projects that kept him talking and thinking mostly of closets and traumas, Bomer feels so at home within this raucously funny ensemble.
Moreover, Bomer’s desire to turn to comedy and queer joy was more urgent and necessary than he could have anticipated. Not only did they shoot an episode on election night, but they had to reckon with Lavin’s death during the holidays. (Her loss required retooling the last three episodes, and the season finale is now titled “The Show Must Go On.”)
“Playing it and processing it at the same time is something I wouldn’t wish on anybody,” Bomer says. “She’ll be missed. She led with such a beautiful, gentle, dignified grace. She wasn’t all wrapped up in herself with her process. She was there for the team. It still doesn’t even feel real, if I’m honest with you. It was tremendously upsetting, and I’m glad we had each other to lean on.”
Add to that needing to work through the fires that ravaged Los Angeles in January, and you have a dizzying, hilarious sitcom being created under very trying circumstances.
As he looks back on this roller coaster of a ride, Bomer, in true Jerry fashion, is wistful and hopeful in equal measure.
“It taught me to keep my heart open,” he says. “I feel like I came at this whole process like a puppy dog myself, like a golden retriever, just enthusiastic and excited to work with my idols. Increasingly, the world started to feel more and more Orwellian over the course of filming. And so to have a character who forced me to, at least for a certain amount of time every day, keep my heart open and look at things on the bright side and stay enthusiastic and positive was really therapeutic.”
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