Bonnie Somerville
Bonnie Somerville is an actor, born 1974.
Brooklyn, a musical theatre major at Boston College that she left before finishing, several years singing in New York bands, then Los Angeles at twenty-two. Bonnie Somerville, born in 1974, came to acting through music and has kept both running since.
The famous credit is seven episodes of Friends as Mona, which is a strange thing to be known for: a functional part, written to be an obstacle, played well enough that the audience ended up feeling bad about it. That is roughly the shape of the career. She has been the lead-adjacent woman in a long run of series that networks liked and did not renew, including Courtney Scott on Grosse Pointe, Mimi on Kitchen Confidential, Caitlin Dowd on Cashmere Mafia and Detective Deb McKenzie on Golden Boy. Earlier there was a stretch on NYPD Blue as Laura Murphy. Her one genuine lead was Dr. Christa Lorenson in the first season of Code Black, a medical drama that used her warmth as its way in.
In film she has mostly been cast in comedies as the sane one: Denise in Without a Paddle, Elizabeth Chadway in The Ugly Truth, Suzie Cavandish in Labor Pains. There is a curious second stream of family animal pictures, where she voices animals and appears in the Santa Paws films, and then a late turn as Vicky Rabies in Heels, which is the sort of character name that suggests somebody finally let her play something with an edge on it.
Movies (13)
TV (11)
Where to start with Bonnie Somerville
Seven episodes of Friends remain the credit everyone knows, and they are worth watching as a case study in doing a thankless job well. Mona exists to be in the way, and Somerville plays her as a perfectly reasonable person who has walked into the wrong sitcom.
For the actual lead performance, go to Code Black. The first season is the one built around her, and it is a better medical drama than its reputation suggests, with Somerville at the center of it.
Cashmere Mafia and Grosse Pointe are the interesting failures, both short-lived and both giving her more to play than the ratings implied. Without a Paddle is the broad comedy most people have seen her in, The Ugly Truth is the glossy one, and Heels is the recent turn worth catching, a wrestling drama with a much better cast than it needed.