DREAM team
MATT BOMER and BILL PULLMAN join up for a new season of TV’s hit crime series The Sinner— and gear up for the Super Bowl.
On the sidelines of this Super Bowl party– themed photo shoot, Matt Bomer is inhaling a bowl of Cheez Doodles.
The actor, known for his roles in such movies as Magic Mike
XXL and The Normal Heart, is holding the snack a few inches from his face and wafting the orange dust up to his nose.
Bomer, 42, is quick to explain that this isn’t some kind of alternative sinus-clearing treatment. He’s on a crazy calorie-restrictive diet for a plot point in the third season of USA Network’s The
Sinner, on which he’s gueststarring, and this is the closest he’ll let himself come to breaking his regimen. The verdict? “Smells kind of like feet,” he says with a laugh.
He’s here with Bill Pullman, 66, who has portrayed
The Sinner’s troubled detective Harry Ambrose since the show debuted in 2017, to talk about two things near and dear to both of them: the new season of the critically acclaimed series, premiering on Feb. 6, and that other show that happens to be the biggest one in the world, the Super Bowl.
Count Pullman and Bomer among the millions of people who will be tuning in Feb. 2 to watch the NFL’s two top teams go head-tohead on the world’s biggest sports stage. And, of course, to watch all of the commercials.
“I love the commercials—I think they’re fantastic and so creative with that little window of time,” Bomer says. But as great as they are to watch, it’s not always possible to actually hear them at his house. “We have three boys under the age of 15, so it’s hard to get everybody to be quiet.”
Bomer and his husband of eight years, Hollywood publicist Simon Halls, are dads to Kit, 14, and 11-year-old twin brothers Henry and Walker. For Pullman, the most challenging part of the Big Game is, well, sitting there and watching it. “I need to flee sometimes,” he admits. “The tension is too much; I can’t take it! I gotta get some distance between me and the screen, like when you’re watching a scary movie.”
Pullman has three grown children with his wife, Tamara, to whom he’s been married since 1987. Son Jack, 30, is a puppet maker; daughter Measa, 31, is a singer-songwriter; and son Lewis, 26, is an actor who appeared in the movie Bad Times at the El Royale and will star alongside Tom Cruise in June’s Top Gun: Maverick.
IN THE BEGINNING: SPORTS
A love of football is in Matt Bomer’s blood. His father, John, was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in 1971. Young Bomer played receiver and defensive back for his high school team in Spring, Texas, and though he never considered going pro like his dad, he’s not entirely retired from football.
“When we go home to Texas for Thanksgiving,” he says, “we have our family game of touch football.” Does he feel his old competitive instincts kicking in? “No, we’re really just trying to do something with the 9,000 calories we just ate!”
But wait, if his dad played for the Cowboys, what’s with the San Francisco 49ers jersey Bomer’s wearing today? “Our oldest son, Kit, is a football fanatic, and when he got to an age where he could choose a team, I said, ‘We’re in California, here’s the list of teams you can choose from.’ And he picked the 49ers. We’ve since gone to games. He’s a real diehard fan, in good times and in bad.”
And the Bills jersey for Pullman? “I grew up in western New York,” he says proudly. “And the Buffalo Bills are the one New York football team that does play in New York! They’ve had somewhat of a tragic streak, a terrible winning drought, but I love that their fans have stayed so loyal and things are finally getting better for them.”
Pullman—the son of a physician father and a nurse mom—grew up in Hornell, N.Y., and, like Bomer, played football in school, as did all of his brothers. His dad gave the Pullman boys a solid training plan. “My father put his four boys all to work on dairy farms in the summertime to make us stronger for football,” he says. Early on, Pullman came to the same conclusion as Bomer did: He wasn’t going to become a gridiron star. “I had terrible eyesight,” he says. “They had me on the defensive line and I could get through the line, but then I’d get out there and I couldn’t see anything! So my sophomore year, I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ ” Long after they hung up their uniforms, both say that their days playing sports made lasting impressions. Pullman remembers the talks one of his coaches would give the team. “He’d say maybe it’s good if everybody born with a silver spoon in their mouth remembers that not everybody is as well off as they are,” he says. “It was such a fascinating concept to me: You’re lucky, probably luckier than somebody else who you should be helping out.”
Bomer says he learned a lot about discipline and work ethic from his days playing ball, and shares a moment of unexpected support. “I was at the Magic Mike premiere and signing things for people. And I’m going from one person to the next, and there was one of my high school football coaches! He was there with his daughter, just supporting me. It was one of the more surreal experiences in my life, and meant a lot to me,” he says.
GETTING INTO CHARACTER
Hard work, support and a bunch of people working together to achieve a common goal doesn’t only apply to the world of sports—it takes all of those things and more to create a TV show. And to create one that is as popular with fans as it is with critics in this age of streaming TV is next to impossible. But The Sinner, with each season focusing on a new crime investigation that has more twists and turns than a Bill Belichick playbook, has done just that. It’s amassed quite a list of Critics’
Choice, Golden Globe, People’s Choice, Screen Actors Guild and Emmy nominations as well.
In this new season, Bomer’s character, Jamie, is a well-off expectant father who becomes involved in a fatal car crash. “On the surface, it really seems like he has everything,” Bomer says. “But inside, he’s suffering from a really profound sense of loneliness and spiritual disconnection.”
As for this season’s plot? Pullman says he’s requested not to know too much about how the story unfolds. “I like the idea of going at it in the present tense,” he says. That unknown allows for spontaneity and the unexpected when the cameras start rolling. “Oh, yeah, we get outside the pocket and scramble!” agrees Bomer.
Spoilers for the new season are few and far between. While Bomer did tell us his calorie-restrictive diet has something to do with the plot, he refuses to say more. And when he reveals that he
and a co-star put together a playlist to help him get in the mindset of his character, Jamie, he won’t share a single track. In fact, if you are a big fan of The Sinner and you’re desperate to learn some spoilers, your best bet may be to find a seat next to Bomer when he’s flying cross-country. “I’ve been commuting home to California from shooting in New York, and I try to use that six hours to really get the lines in my head. I’ll be sitting there talking to no one, and people around me must be like, ‘Can you scoot me away from this guy?’”
So what was it like for Bomer to be the new guy on the team of a show with such a winning track record and a wide following? “I’ve been a fan of the show, so it’s extra surreal to all of a sudden be in a scene across from a character you’ve enjoyed for two seasons,” he says of working alongside Pullman. “And for that character to be played by a great actor like Bill, who I’ve admired for so many years, my main M.O. is just, ‘Matt, don’t mess this up!’”
Pullman is quick to jump in. “Mess up? No, no, no. Matt is the running back who you can just hand the ball to to score all of the points for you.” Now that’s teamwork!