‘Worst Week’ star has the best timing

By DAVID HILTBRAND

Kyle Bornheimer honed his craft doing TV commercials.

The freshman CBS comedy “Worst Week” (Mondays, 9:30 p.m.) may be the closest thing to pure slapstick that prime time has seen since “Perfect Strangers” two decades ago.

But the show’s zestiest flavor is provided by its star, Kyle Bornheimer, as the hapless Sam.

With his manic stop-and-start rhythm, the way his thoughts trample over each other, Bornheimer is like Woody Allen on a case of Red Bull. He’s the only guy on TV who can make you laugh at setup and throwaway lines.

“I try not to hit it on the nose but find other ways to make people laugh that they’re not expecting,” he says of his unique delivery. “It’s almost like you con people into thinking they’re going to laugh at one thing and they laugh the moment before or the moment after. It’s like Walter Payton. Or George Bush.”

“Worst Week” focuses on poor Sam, who is trying to navigate his engagement to his pregnant girlfriend (Erinn Hayes) while trying to overcome the stern disapproval of his future in-laws (Kurtwood Smith and Nancy Lenehan), who are aghast at Sam’s uncanny ability to make every situation worse.

“He’s such a sweet guy at heart and so well-intentioned,” says Bornheimer, 33, “but he makes a disaster of everything. He’s a bit of a wrecking ball.”

The sitcom’s executive producer Matt Tarses says, “Kyle has this mix of physical and verbal acuity. He makes everything we give him better.”

If you think you recognize Bornheimer, you’re probably right. He honed his craft in the abbreviated format of commercials.

If he wore tattoos of all the products he’s pitched, Bornheimer would be more ink-stained than Tommy Lee.

He has lit up spots for Coors, Geico, Staples, Sprint, Imodium AD and Stanley Tools (remember the construction worker jousting in a wheelbarrow?)

It was a campaign for T-Mobile that made the actor a household face. Bornheimer played a guy trying to leave a phone message for a girl the day after their first date.

He has to keep rerecording because with each attempt at coming off cool and breezy, he digs himself further into awkward inappropriateness. “I had a great time last night. And sorry about the sweating” ... “Gosh, you ate like a horse last night.”

The T-Mobile ad opened a lot of doors for Bornheimer. “I’ve been at this a long time, but commercials are what hit for me,” he says. “Casting directors watch those commercials.”

The ad led directly to his casting on “Worst Week.”

“Matt Tarses had seen me for an audition, and I think he liked me,” says Bornheimer. “Then he was pointed toward the commercial shortly after and got the idea I might be able to do something with the role.”

Like a number of recent sitcoms, “WW” was based on a British series, “The Worst Week of My Life.”

As of this phone interview, Bornheimer hadn’t seen the original. “I consider myself so hip, you’d think I would have seen it naturally,” he says with dry sarcasm. “But I didn’t, and I’ve been feeling guilty. But when this came along I didn’t want to be influenced.”

There are other influences he is proud to acknowledge.

Bornheimer grew up in a large family in Mishawaka, Ind., a town outside South Bend.

“My dad had a huge movie collection,” he says. “So we all had a good sense of entertainment history. I was a Jack Lemmon fan more than most people from my generation.”

After dropping out of college and moving to Los Angeles, Bornheimer tried to make ends meet any way he could. He waited tables, worked at Tower Records and at a video store.

The job he’d most like to forget was at a casting agency. “For a year I was the world’s worst assistant to a talent manager,” he says. “I was awful at it. Really disorganized. Just not the person you want at the front desk of your office.”