I hit Emmy winner Annie Murphy over 20 times with a ping pong ball. And I still have nightmares about it 🙂
A member of the Groundlings Sunday Company, Alex Bonifer certainly knows comedy. Currently playing opposite Annie Murphy in AMC’s new dark comedy series “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” he plays the quintessential sitcom sidekick. Bonifer also has a recurring spot on NBC’s “Superstore,” and is known for his improv all over LA with this group Daddy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. To get his start, he studied improv at IO West, UCB, UCB New York, and The People’s Improv Theater. Now he has this amazing role, new friends, and plenty of stories from the set to share. “Kevin Can F**k Himself” airs on AMC Sundays at 9 pm.
Meet Alex Bonifer.
Colleen Bement: A big congrats on your role in “Kevin Can F**k Himself.” This show looks dark and fabulous and funny! Tell us about your character Neil.
Alex Bonifer: Thank you so much! Dark and fabulous and funny are three perfect words to describe our show 🙂 I play the role of Neil O’Connor; Kevin’s neighbor and best friend. On the surface, he’s the quintessential sitcom sidekick. He’s a dimwitted, oafish, galoot of a human who’s always around and ready to commit, wholeheartedly, to whatever stupid adventure Kevin cooks up. On a more granular level, Neil represents male (specifically white male) privilege, entitlement, and a lack of consequences for bad behavior.
CB: Had you known any of the actors from the show prior to filming?
AB: I did not know any of them personally, no, but we quickly became good friends. We’re a very close cast. I obviously knew of Annie and her success on “Schitt’s Creek” but I hadn’t seen the show prior to the audition process and decided to keep it that way until we finished filming. I didn’t want to bring any “fanboy” energy to set or see her as anything other than Annie, the actor playing Allison on our show. Now of course jokes on me because I bring nothing but fanboy energy to everyone on set because they’re all so talented. Lol.
CB: Would you happen to have any funny stories from the set?
AB: I have many funny stories but I’ll share my favorite with you. So after the pandemic pushed our production for approximately 6 months, we finally made it to Boston and began two weeks of pre-production (physicals, costume fittings, hair cuts, makeup tests, etc.) before production began. One of the last elements of pre-production was the camera test. Essentially all of the actors’ first time on set together in costume. They would have us do things like; stand up, sit down, enter from the kitchen, exit through the front door, etc. Our director, Oz Rodriguez, says “let’s put the first scene on its feet just for fun”.
Now in the first scene Kevin and Neil are playing beer pong, Allison enters, Neil does a 360 jump/spin and hits Allison (Annie) in the face with the ping pong ball. We all laugh, the scene carries on. Now during the first two passes at the scene, I’m throwing the ball 10 feet away from Annie. Absolutely zero chance am I hitting EMMY WINNER Annie Murphy with a ping pong ball during this camera test. No chance in hell. So we do the scene one last time. I close my eyes, jump, spin, and release a dart of a throw which….hits Annie Murphy square in the forehead. And there are probably 50 or so people on set and that all let out an audible “ooooooo!”. And I’m frozen. Terrified. Thinking to myself “well this was a cool experience best of luck to whoever they replace me with because I just got fired”. When the scene ends I run straight over to Annie to apologize and make sure she was ok. Her response was “of course you dork it was a ping pong ball” with a laugh.
When it came time to actually shoot the scene (and the insert of the ping pong ball hitting her) a week or so later Annie insisted that I be the one to throw the ball at her because she knew how much I hated myself for hitting her the first time. In total, I hit Emmy winner Annie Murphy over 20 times with a ping pong ball. And I still have nightmares about it 🙂
CB: What was your audition like? Did you have to perform it over Zoom?
AB: I had three auditions in total; first-round audition, callback/producer session, network test, and all of them took place in person just before the pandemic shutdown went into effect. The audition process is definitely daunting and nerve-wracking but I had for some reason convinced myself that I wasn’t right for the role which actually freed me up to make some big choices both in terms of performance and who I thought Neil was. One of the audition scenes was the first scene of the series (same beer pong scene mentioned previously) which ends with an allusion to Neil running a naked lap around the house for having lost the beer pong match against Kevin.
On paper, that’s where the scene ended but I decided that Neil would start undressing and begin his naked lap…which is what I did. I put on a pair of boxers over my briefs and when the scene ended I pulled my pants down to reveal the “prop” boxers and began to exit the room. At the time I thought “boy, they’re either going to love this and think it’s hilarious or call security and have me escorted off the premises”. Thank God they thought it was funny.
CB: Let’s dive into your improv. You’re a member of the Groundlings Sunday Company. Congrats, that is so cool! I’ve got a couple of questions:
1.) What do you love about doing improv, and what do you dislike about doing improv?
AB: This is going to sound amazingly cliche but I love everything about Improv… even the stuff I hate about it. I love the opportunity to create something completely original in front of and informed by the audience watching you. It’s such a collaborative art form in that way because if the audience is laughing at something you can just do more of what was making them laugh. If they’re not laughing at something you can just move on until you find something else to make them laugh at. I love the fact that you really are walking a tight-rope with no safety net to catch you if things go bad. I guess to summarize… I love the fact that every time you step on stage you have an opportunity to create a masterpiece just as much as you do a heaping pile of garbage.
2.) Do you have any other upcoming projects that you’re allowed to share with your fans?
AB: I have a fun little part in an awesome movie called “Film Fest” which will be available on most streaming platforms on July 23rd. I’m also a member of “The Groundlings Sunday Company” and we will resume shows on August 8th (woop, woop!) so get your tickets before they sell out and please be sure to tune into “Kevin Can F**k Himself” on AMC Sundays at 9 pm.
Written by Colleen Bement
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