• written by Luciana December 30, 2016

    Matt Bomer in 2016: A Year in Review

    2016 is finishing and I decided to start a new feature in our website, named “A Year in Review“. It is basically a summary on all Matt professional activities during the year.

    Matt started the year still on board of American Horror Story: Hotel and with some new project to be released: “The Nice Guys” and “The Magnificent Seven“, and also a new Amazon show, “The Last Tycoon“.

    On January 5, Matt was announced to be on cover of Men’s Health, with a new photoshoot by Doug Inglish. Its a great interview in which Matt talks about his diet, his workouts and… guns. Still in January, Lady Gaga was guest editor on V Magazine and, of course, some Hotel was featured on it.

    In February, Matt was spot on set of “The Last Tycoon” in Los Angeles. His casting was announced in November/2015 but the show was setup at Amazon over a year before it. The drama is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final unfinished novel. Matt plays the main character, Monroe Stahr.

    On February, some pictures of Matt filming Walking Out surfaced. The film is based on the short story by David Quammen that can be found on his book Blood Line: Stories of Fathers & Sons, and is written and directed by Alex and Andrew Smith. Bill Pullman and Josh Wiggins are also part of the cast. The film was announced as part of Sundance line-up for 2017, and the first trailer was released this month.

    Matt’s first public promotional event was made in March 09, at the 2016 Team USA Media Summit. On March 20, he attended the Paleyfest closing night presentations, with American Horror Story: Hotel. This was the first time we heard Matt might be coming back to AHS season 6 (grumbles).

    Also during Paleyfest Matt also talked a bit about the upcoming Montgomery Clift biopic that’s on upcoming status on HBO. His name was confirmed back in January/2015, following his praised performance in The Normal Heart. The project still is on development, and hopefully we’ll heard more about it next year.

    On April 1st it was announced Matt would speak at MPTF ‘Reel Stories, Real Lives’. The event, benefiting MPTF, took place in LA in April 7. Matt told the story of George Ciatti and his partner, that are together for over 50 years.

    Also in April, Matt interviewed Jack Kilmer to V Magazine. Both are co-stars in The Nice Guys, which means it’s time for some movie promotion.

    The film has its first trailer released in April and soon magazines started to publish pieces about the film. A character poster of John Boy was released short after and on May, Matt attended alongside the cast and director Shane Black a Q&A which was broadcast via Facebook. He also did several interviews to promote the film during the first week of May.

    The Nice Guys had premieres in Los Angeles, New York (combined with a Sirius XM appearance), Cannes and London. Matt also took part of AOL Build series and did interviews on Live with Kelly and Stephen Colbert. To check an in-depth coverage of the promotional tour, you can check our ‘The Nice Guys‘ tag.

    The film had its US premiere on May 26, following worldwide to June 30 in some South America countries. It was very well received by critics and public (its score on Rotten Tomatoes is 92% positive), but sadly it didn’t made much on box office, grossing around $57 million worldwide. The film also received a nomination as Best Comedy at the Critics Choice awards.

    Still in May (what a busy month!) it was announced Matt was cast in a new project with Mark Ruffalo, named “Anything“. The first news about it came from a Ruffalo tweet shouting out a film he was doing with Matt Bomer and John Carroll Lynch in Los Angeles. A week later, the film was wrapping up and we got no news until some media outlets started to publish about it in September 1st, and then all hell breaks loose. That’s because Matt is playing a transgender sex worker, which caused a backlash on social media – that ended up with Mark coming on Matt’s defense. We have no words on when Anything will be released (and I’m preparing myself already for the promo tour/coverage).

    In May, Amazon released dates for its pilots, including The Last Tycoon. It debuted on June 17 exclusively on Amazon Video, and the customers had opportunity to stream and review the pilots, which helped Amazon to chose the next Amazon Original Series. Matt gave several interviews to promote the show (including one of my favourites, to Buzzfeed), until the show premiere (or Social Soiree) on June 28. Tycoon was picked as full series on July 27

    Still on May 25, Matt presentedThe Bricker Humanitarian Award’ at College Television Awards. On June 4 he attended the Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards, to celebrate his The Normal Heart co-star Julia Roberts. On June 18 he attended, alongside husband Simon, the Hollywood Bowl Opening Night.

    On June 12, forty-nine innocent people — most of them Latinx — were killed at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It was clearly a hate crime against the LGBT community. Ryan Murphy put together a video tribute/campaign altogether with the Human Rights Campaign, named Stop the Hate. It basically told the story of all 49 victims of this terrible episode.

    Finished The Last Tycoon promotion, it was time to start The Magnificent Seven. The trailer was released on July 18, with a release date set for September 23. But, since we all know Matt’s part was really small on this film, he didn’t take part of any promotional of the film. He was listed as confirmed in some premiere lists, but never attended.

    In August Matt did a cameo in a Comedy Central’s Junketeers episode, titled Danny Boy, and the episode was released on Youtube. On August 19, Matt visited Lunch with Bruce, on SiriusXM.

    On the same day Matt and Simon attended a Benefit For onePULSE Foundation. The benefit was to support and raise funds for the victims of the Orlando tragedy. On September 9, Matt attended the Stand Up to Cancer, in which he also attended phone calls to raise money. And in October 1st he attended the (and presented at) MPTF 95th anniversary celebration with “Hollywood’s Night Under The Stars”.

    Matt co-hosted Live with Kelly on October 18. A few days later, during the Halloween special, Kelly aired a Hamilton spoof with Matt singing in costume.

    At this point, American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare had premiered already, and fans was still waiting for Matt to show up on screen. He did an interview during an event about fans not being disappointed. The thing is: after all 10 episodes aired, we didn’t see Matt on screen. He was the Crack’d Narrator, host of the documentary “Crack’d”, and we only heard his voice. Despite enjoying the season (the show really outdid itself, and I did like it!), it WAS disappointing.

    Still in October, Matt attended four more events: the unveiling of Tiffany Co Store Renovation on October 13 in Beverly Hills, the 7th Annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic on October 15 at Pacific Palisades, the “The Roads to Home” Primary Stage at Broadway on October 19 in New York, and the GLSen Respect Awards on October 21, in Beverly Hills.

    In November, Matt attended and presented at the American Music Awards. He presented Lady Gaga, one of the performers.

    This was Matt’s final public appearance of the year (of course, we never count the paparazzi appearances on this review). But we still had some final projects he’s involved:

    On December 5, we received the news that Walking Out will premiere in Sundance, followed by the trailer.
    On December 22 surfaced the first pictures of a music video Matt is participating for The Art of Elysium.
    On December 28 another Matt colaboration to honor the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Love is Love, was released on Amazon.

    A video posted by Bianca Poletti (@bpoletti) on

    As next, Matt will be busy. Sundance festival runs from January 19-29 and Matt will certainly there promoting Walking Out. On January 4 there will be the Love is Love book launch and we’re also expecting him to attend. The Art of Elysium’s Heaven 2017 will be on January 7 and since Matt and Simon are involved on it, we’re also expecting him to attend. And, The Last Tycoon start filming in January 5. Sounds pretty good (and busy), huh?


    So, that’s it! This is our last update of the year and, with it, I want to wish all our visitors a very happy New Year! Thanks for another year, for your visit, your comments, your friendship!

    We’ll try to make this an annual series, and I want to give a thanks/shout-out to my friends Frederik from Simply Streep, Lindsey from Rachel McAdams Online and Jess from Glamour Reese for the inspiration on the ‘Year in Review’ special.

    To finish, I wish Matt and his family the best in this coming year. Happy 2017!

    2 Comments to "Matt Bomer in 2016: A Year in Review"

    1. Catherine Boland says:

      Thanks for this. A very Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.

    2. Melanie Pote says:

      Wow. Thank you for this. And thank you for all that you do. What a gift to be able to do this for Matt and his fans!