Kyle Bornheimer – Angel from Hell

By starrymag | July 2, 2016

By: Nicole Smith

 

 

Q) I would love to hear about how your career in acting began. Your IMDB resume is quite extensive.

 

A) I moved to LA when I was nineteen years old and I wanted to be a filmmaker. I wasn’t really thinking about acting, but after about five years I switched gears, started acting, got into acting classes and did whatever short films or theatre my friends asked me to do. I took whatever classes were available and that I could afford. I just did that and worked the requisite survival jobs for years and eventually got a commercial agent. From there, I just sort of kept building a reel to show what I could do and would send it to agents and managers every time I had anything that I could put on that reel, which at that time was a VHS copy [laughs] that I would send around. It was just a combination of taking classes and never saying “no” to any kind of work and just trying to get better. I was relatively patient with that as long as I knew I was putting in the time. I just had a sense that it was going to take however long it was going to take and I knew it wasn’t an overnight thing. After I started booking commercials a little more consistently, I was able to book a few tiny TV things and then go from there. It went somewhat as planned, in terms of everything building on everything, but it had its peaks a valleys like most people’s careers. You’re up and down and sometimes you’re panicked, but sometimes you’re on a smooth ride. Other times, you’re doing whatever comes along. That’s kind of the road I’ve been on for 15 years now.

 

Q) Pilot season can be crazy, so when you got the “Angel From Hell” script, what attracted you to it?

 

A) The script came to me and I think the first thing I heard was that Jane Lynch was doing this pilot where she plays this really irreverent, inappropriate woman that claims to be a guardian angel. I just knew that was a perfect part for her. As a fan of hers, I wanted to see her do that and I asked for the script hoping that there would be something in it for me. I was looking for something where I could really do something with the role, knew that I could pull it off in a fun and unique way, but also be a part of a show that I really believed in. Thankfully, the script was really well written. I knew Tad Quill. He was a writer on some other shows that I had been a lead in and I was a fan of his work, really trusted and loved how he put the show together. The part was written as Allison’s [Maggie Lawson] younger brother, early 20s, and I called and convinced them that I could be right for this. There was two or three scripts last year that I really loved and that was at the top of them. Thankfully, I was able to come on board.

 

Q) Who was your first read with?

 

A) For “Angel From Hell,” I was lucky to get an offer because I had worked with Tad before. He knew me pretty well and CBS and I had worked together. I’ve been really looking to work with CBS again for a while. They gave me my first big opportunity with “Worst Week” in 2008 and they took a chance and it turned out to be a really good show that was very satisfying and helped me a lot in my career. During that whole experience they were just wonderful and I’ve maintained a good relationship with them and have always been looking for the right thing again to do with them. That was another thing that came together really nicely for this.

 

Q) Your character, Brad, he has three relationships going on: the one with his father, his sister and he has this flirtation with Amy [Jane Lynch]. As an actor, what has been your favorite relationship to explore?

 

A) Well, you know, it’s funny. On the page, the scene that really got me excited to go pinch myself for this role and try to go and get it was the scene where I flirt with Jane. Just to be able to do that with Jane Lynch, who is one of the best comedic voices onscreen of our time…I knew it was going to be fun and proved to be so on set. I think everyone knew that anything they were going to be able to do with Jane was going to be fun.

 

What also ended up being fun was Maggie and I as we explored the brother/sister thing. Around the second episode we were shooting, we were just bantering back and forth. We were able to draw on that sort of shorthand that you have with your siblings and the fact that they had just went through a tragic time over the past year with their mother dying strengthened their bond. This shorthand that they have with each other, we really leaned into having fun with that and talked to Tad about celebrating that they can get on each other’s nerves, but they can finish each other’s sentences. They’re one step ahead of each other, they know each other’s ticks and faults and strengths. You do that with your siblings, you know everything about them. You can be with other people and your sibling does something that’s out of character and you give them a look like, “What are you trying to do?” That happens all the time with my brother and I. I’m maybe trying to do something and he’s looking at me like, “You fool.”

 

The first pilot, I don’t think Kevin [Pollak] and I worked together. We weren’t in the same scenes and I think the second or third pilot they put us on this little adventure together. They started really developing the Fuller boys mentality where we embark on these ridiculous projects with each other that we’re convinced are foolproof and they’re just moronic. [laughs] We consider ourselves the fix-it guys. We’re really overprotective of Allison so we’re always off on these little activities to protect her.

 

Q) I really loved the scene where you guys were trying to put together a heckle kit.

 

A) Yeah, the heckle kit to heckle her ex-boyfriend to get him out of her life. [laughs] So once we nailed that, these two numbskulls embarking on these adventures – that became a really fun thing to lock into with each other.

 

Q) Did you have any inspiration for your character as Brad?

 

A) Brad was really well-drawn initially and then when we changed his age to be more my age — which we really didn’t do much with — Tad was like, “Play it however old you are.” I just immediately knew he was this fun loving guy that probably leaps before he thinks, maybe gets a little overly enthusiastic by things. Tad mentioned early on that he’s easily inspired, which I think is why he’s easily seduced by Jane. I think he’s a very positive and upbeat character, too, but they also worked on this thing where he’s got a little bit of a temper and he’s frustrated with himself as well. What I knew immediately is that I was going to find a balance between these extremes and it’s a very fun, unhinged way to approach a character because you don’t have to turn your mind off and you can work from his impulses a lot. He’s a child, so I think if I had to draw on anything it was my own sense of immaturity and prolonged adolescence that I’ve been able to maintain as a real person.

 

Q) A real person. [laughs]

 

A) A jackass, yeah. So, he’s a light character with these extreme pulls to him and it was easy to see how I could swim around in that.

 

Q) When I interviewed Maggie, she said you’re probably the person she cracks up with the most on set. Has humor always came naturally to you?

 

A) I think I’ve always understood humor’s value, I guess. I don’t know if I’ve always been funny and I don’t think as a kid I was necessarily funny, but I knew I had to have a good time and joke around. I got into high school where I started to experiment with class clownery a little bit and liked the response. A lot of clowning around though, a lot of joking, comes from nervousness in social situations. Sometimes it comes from not trusting you’re interesting or engaging or charming just on your own by having a laid back conversation, but you push the comic element around because you’re nervous that you can’t have a conversation without a joke. I was around my mom, dad and grandparents. There was always lots of old movies and old TV shows being discussed and watched around the house. So, I was exposed to a lot of comedy and as I got older I just was just naturally attracted to entertainment. One thing leads to another and you become sort of a student of it, you become someone that’s always speaking about funny things and funny people and that seeps into you as well.

 

Q) What are some things that you can share about Brad’s journey in Angel From Hell?

 

A) With lots of Season One shows, some things are in the pilot that you know about your character and then sometimes you learn things about your character as you go. It’s been kind of fun just learning what the writers are thinking, elements of his personality that complement the stuff that we already know about him. He’s getting back on his feet after a divorce and he’s living with his sister so he comes off a little bit untethered, which plays nicely. I think that’s why he’s leaning a little bit to his more adolescent side, too. It’s because he’s a little disconnected from what might have been a more solid life right before we met him. So, he’s got to get back in the dating world, which is going to be new for him. We’re going to see him try to navigate that and I think because they’re all coming off their mother’s death, he’s very sensitive to what his dad and his sister need right now. He instills himself in their lives quite a bit, trying to protect them, and sometimes probably overprotecting them. There will be little personality traits that will pop in. He can get kind of frustrated with himself and has a little bit of a temper and he has to cool himself down in funny little ways.

 

Q) What is something your fans would be surprised to know about you?

 

A) Surprised to know about me? I’m a huge movie buff. I came out to LA in the ’90s when independent filmmaking was really taking off so I spent years working in video stores. I’m a huge movie guy and I have a podcast called Movie Court where we dissect…My brother’s a judge and I’m the defense attorney and my friend Steve Krueger is a prosecutor. He tries to put movies in jail and I try to defend them. Sometimes I give myself really hard things to defend like Godfather III. I like to talk a lot about movies. I’m a guy with two boys and I coach all their teams. I’ve been enjoying that the past few years. I don’t know what else is interesting about me. I don’t think there’s much interesting about me. [laughs]

 

Q) Is your podcast a monthly thing?

 

A) This is the first season we did. We did like eleven episodes and did it every couple of weeks to try it out. It got a good response so Season Two we’re going to go bigger with it and get sponsors and everything. It’s on iTunes. If I’m not acting in a show, I’m either taking kids around or I’m being a film geek somewhere talking about movies for hours on end with somebody.

 

Q) What have you learned from working on “Angel From Hell” that you’ll always carry with you?

 

A) I think, every project, I get better as a professional. You find what you need to be your best acting self in that given scene or given moment. You know what you need quicker, you’re more efficient, you’re more professional and it has always been fun but more fun now. As I work with these amazing other professionals, I mean, Kevin Pollak has all these great stories and some of them are just fun Hollywood stories and others kind of have a lesson to them or teaches you about how to survive in this business. So, it’s been great working with Kevin. Age is funny, and he has all this wealth of knowledge, too. I’m often bugging him to pass on some wisdom. Kevin Pollak, I guess, would be the answer to that, what I will take with me.

 

 

 

This interview was conducted before Angel From Hell was cancelled. The remaining episodes of the series will begin airing Saturday, July 2, at 8 p.m. (EDT) on CBS. Two episodes will air each Saturday night. Kyle Bornheimer can be found on Twitter @KyleBornheimer.