Why Boomer From Good Girls Looks So Familiar
From the outset of NBC's "Good Girls," the three women at the center — Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks), Annie Marks (Mae Whitman), and Ruby Hill (Retta) –run into their fair share of curveballs, beginning with a garden variety bank robbery gone awry. When the Fine & Frugal grocery store turns out to be a front for the mob, the women soon become caught up with a number of bad actors, whether it's a member of the crime ring or an FBI agent posing as a love interest.
Perhaps no character has been a thorn in their side quite so long as Boomer, Annie's boss at Fine & Frugal. From the pilot onward, his vile behavior never really diminishes. Over the course of his three seasons on "Good Girls," Boomer maintains a roach-like persistence when it comes to survival, even escaping from a correctional facility to once again reappear in the women's lives.
For the actor who plays Boomer, "Good Girls" wasn't his first prominent television role. Here's where fans may have seen him before.
David Hornsby sang with Michael C. Hall in Six Feet Under
David Hornsby has been acting professionally since 1999, when he appeared in a Season 5 episode of "ER." In the years that followed, Hornsby played minor roles in "Pearl Harbor" and "Minority Report." His early TV and film work culminated in a seven-episode arc in "Six Feet Under" in 2003, marking the actor's first recurring role.
In Season 3 of "Six Feet Under," David (Michael C. Hall) joins the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, where he meets Patrick, played by Hornsby. At first, Patrick is an acquaintance on David's journey to pursue some independent hobbies. But as David and his partner Keith encounter a rocky stage in their relationship, Patrick emerges as a one-time love interest.
Even today, fans of Hornsby are delighted to watch his early performance in "Six Feet Under." "I was so pleasantly surprised when he popped up in six feet under [during] my first watch!!" wrote u/Consistent-Screen-19 in the "Six Feet Under" subreddit. "He's awesome."
Hornsby got real in The Joe Schmo Show
For his follow-up to "Six Feet Under," David Hornsby underwent a huge tonal shift for "The Joe Schmo Show." Launched in 2003 on Spike, the reality series is a mostly straightforward competition show, with one big twist: all but one of the contestants are actors. The Season 1 mark was Matt Kennedy Gould, who competed weekly in a show he thought was called "Lap of Luxury."
Hornsby spends much of his time on the show belching and talking over competitors, a calculated act meant to mess with Gould's head. "I'm this guy now," said Hornsby in the pilot. "I'm the annoying, obnoxious guy. I'm sort of forming this picture for him, you know?" Hornsby wasn't the only actor on the show who would go on to make it big. Kristin Wiig played Dr. Pat, a fake marriage counselor (via IMDb).
Hornsby played Rickety Cricket in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
In the mid-aughts, David Hornsby appeared in a number of short-lived sitcoms, including "The Mullets," "Center of the Universe," and the John Stamos-starring "Jake in Progress." In 2006, however, he would land the role for which he is perhaps best known: Rickety Cricket in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."
On a 2021 episode of "The Always Sunny Podcast," Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day revealed that Hornsby was originally in the running to play Mac. "I never considered myself a super funny performer," said McElhenney. "So then my thought was why not just populate this show with really funny people that can make this dark material really funny."
Luckily for fans of "Always Sunny," the show's creator recognized Hornsby's capacity to add humor to the darkest of circumstances. Since Season 2, Matthew Mara, aka Rickety Cricket, has been the primary subject of the gang's callous exploits, leading him to hit rock bottom again and again. He sinks especially low in "A Cricket's Tale," a Season 12 episode that sees the former priest's tragicomic attempt to change his life for the better (via IMDb). Things seem to have worked out in a more sunny way for Hornsby himself, thankfully, who also works as a writer and executive producer on "Always Sunny."
He created and starred in How to Be a Gentleman
By decade's end, David Hornsby had proved that he could reliably play a sensitive choir singer, an unrepentant jerk, or an unhinged former priest. In 2011, he ventured out on a wholly independent project, creating, writing, executive producing, and starring in the lesser-known series "How to Be a Gentleman."
In the CBS sitcom, Hornsby played the character of Andrew Carlson, a protagonist in the vein of Niles and Frasier Crane — in other words, uptight, well-spoken, and somewhat nebbishy. Based on John Bridges' nonfiction book of the same name, the series follows the columnist as he attempts to get in touch with his masculine side with the help of personal trainer Bert (Kevin Dillon), his former high school bully.
Unable to compete with CBS juggernauts like "The Big Bang Theory ” and "Two and a Half Men," ”How to Be a Gentleman" was canceled partway through its first season (via Entertainment Weekly). Still, Hornsby stayed busy in the wake of his show's cancellation, co-creating the animated series "Unsupervised" and appearing in episodes of "Bones" and "New Girl," among other series.
Hornsby reunited with his Always Sunny collaborators in Mythic Quest
In 2020, David Hornsby reunited with his "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" collaborators to star in Apple TV+'s "Mythic Quest." Co-created by Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz, the series looks inside the world of the gaming industry and the success of a popular MMORG. At the center is Ian Grimm (McElhenney), the studio's arrogant creative director. As the game's executive producer David Brittlesbee, Hornsby serves as a foil to McElhenney's ego-driven Grimm. Brittlesbee exudes a lack of confidence, something his employees regularly take advantage of.
Like any other TV show in 2020, "Mythic Quest" was met with its fair share of pandemic-related challenges. The production of Season 2 was met with shutdowns, followed by multiple outbreaks, causing McElhenney and Ganz to rewrite nearly all of Season 2. In spite (or perhaps because) of that, "Mythic Quest" has been acclaimed for its on-screen handling of the pandemic, especially the May 2020 episode "Quarantine" that received critical acclaim. With two more seasons of "Mythic Quest" on the horizon, fans can look forward to watching Hornsby continue his role as the team's hapless leader.