Kyle Bornheimer is the star of NBC’s hilarious new comedy “Perfect Couples”. The show is really catching on with its audience and is consistently funny each episode since it has premiered. Movie Mikes had a chance to chat with Kyle about working on the show and what we can expect from it.
Mike Gencarelli: Tell us about what drew you to the show “Perfect Couples”?
Kyle Bornheimer: What I liked was that it was just such a simple concept for couples. I knew exactly where I taught we could go with the show. When I met with the creators Jon Pollack and Scott Silveri, I just liked what they had to say about what they wanted to do with the show. One question you always ask about when you do a show is “What is this going to be week-in and week-out?” They had a great answers for me and it got me really excited. Not even just for one season, we all had plenty of ideas on what we could do with these couples. In case of my particular character, it just the right neighborhood for me. I was immediately getting ideas and writing them down and playing with the material they had. When something inspires me and makes me go into my office and spend a couple of hours playing with material and coming up with ideas, then I know I am in something that I like.
MG: Do you find on the show, you have a lot of creative freedom?
KB: We have a nice collaboration. We are all committed to making it something really special. The scripts come in incredibly polished and we are working with some of the best writers in the business. Due to that, it makes our job a lot easier. After that it is just us playing around with it and coming up with even more ideas and trying to nail the right tone. For me it is the perfect thing, the scripts are so well done and plus we are still able to play with it during filming.
MG: The cast of the show seems to all have such great chemistry, tell us about working with them?
KB: It is has been great working with such a great cast. We are all hitting our stride as performers. You go to work and everyone is just cracking up. Everyone just wants to do extraordinary work and it is just inspiring. Everyone is really feeding off of each other. I really enjoy the six person scenes personally. We would get really excited when all six of us get to be in the same scene together. Just from a purely hanging out and having fun perspective, it is was fun days. The material was so good and we were playing off each other so well that it was like being on a constant comedy high for a bit.
MG: Besides cast you also seem to have a strong behind the scenes for the show?
KB: Yeah I agree. We are fortunate on this to have just a lot of good people working on it. Jon and Scott have a real rich history of working on television. Andy Ackerman who has directed the episodes, has also directed most of the “Seinfeld” episodes, so we are in good hands. So combined with our inspiration and drive to make it excellent with Andy’s direction and editing team and finally the scripts, we are very lucky. It is fun on the days we are filming and then fun again when we get to revisit it and see it edited together and get to experience it all over again.
MG: What has been your favorite episode to date?
KB: The episode that airs on February 24th called ‘Perfect House’, is one of my favorites. We discover that Dave and Vance’s friendship is like the fourth perfect couple. Once we realize what a great friendship they had…we started really playing with that. Those were some of my favorites scenes. I love the way David (Walton) works and the material that the writers comes up for us together. David is always making me laugh and I love trying to make him laugh during the show. That episode really plays around in a unique way with the intense friendship between these two. In some ways it is more intense than some of the relationships in the show.
MG: I feel that the show seems to get better with each episode, did you notice that during filming…once you all got comfortable?
KB: I felt pretty good early on. It is hard to step away from it though…I can’t be 100% subjective. I was confident we were making a good show. As it was put out there, we found people have to learn about these characters sometimes before the full richness of them could be understood. With comedy once you have learned the characters, then you could follow them a little easier. If we do something funny that goes against character or someone’s character, you would have to know them first to do that. If we would have explored the interesting friendship between Dave and Vance too early, people might not have gotten where it was coming from. That is always the tricky thing with comedy. There are always those legendary stories of show that got off to a slow start like “Seinfeld”…”Will and Grace”…”Cheers”, comedy is harder to get audiences on board right away. I think we have gotten better with each episode as well even though I really 
like the first episodes. I was just excited to be doing good work and then we start thinking we were getting a hang of it and then by episode three we totally had it. It was just smooth sailing from there.
MG: How does working on this show compare to the other shows you’ve worked on?
KB: Generally, I have been very fortunate. I have worked with really fun and creative people. I have been able to do work that I am proud of and this show is no different. I got very invested and into this project as soon as I started. It has been very family-like working on it. All of us in the cast and crew meet almost every week to watch the episodes together, it is really cool. Even if someone is out of town, we would call them as we are watching it. I think we all really bonded. I literally have like seven seasons of ideas for the show. There is plenty of material when it comes to couples. We are all kind of waiting on the edge of our seats to see if we can get a season two.
MG: Can you give us a sneak preview of the upcoming episodes?
KB: We have teased about marriage between the most intense couple on the show, the fight and make-up couple, Vance and Amy. So that through-line of their wedding has provided a lot of hilarity throughout the season as we go on towards the later episodes. Anytime we got scripts about the wedding from the writers, we would get so excited since it was since a unique take on a wedding and was always out of left field. I think they knew that it would be natural for a wedding situation to be in the cards for that couple, but they didn’t want to write just a wedding. They wanted to think of it in a different way. I think it is going to work out really well and I am incredible excited about what is upcoming.
