Watch out Ronald McDonald and step back Wendy — there’s a new face of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and he calls the city of Hagerstown home.

Fifty-seven-year-old Christopher Boyer, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new colonel, grew up on the sleepy streets of Brightwood Acres on the south east side of Washington County.

From his proud Rebel roots to his mother’s legacy on the WCPS School Board, Boyer said Hagerstown always has and always will be his home.

“You know, I worked on Gardenhour Orchards picking plums, apples and stuff, then pruning trees in the winter. So yeah, I was pretty well entrenched in Washington County,” Boyer said.

His interest in acting began at Hagerstown Community College where he ran into two girls who needed an extra hand while working on a set. Set design lead to acting and acting lead to a passion, but it wasn’t until over a decade later in 1992, when he decided to sell his Harrisonburg restaurant and head west.

“Some students who had been working for me had gone on as actors to Chicago and then on to L.A., and at the time, I was kind of just floating around footloose and fancy free and then I thought, ‘hey, what the heck, I’ll go see what’s going on out in Los Angeles,’” Boyer said.

Boyer appeared in several films, including Steven Speilberg’s Lincoln as General Lee, but he’s been vying for the colonel’s suit since 2015.

“I get a call from my agent. ‘You know, you have an audition. You know, same as anything else,’ and then I noticed, ‘oh wait, this is an audition for KFC. Oh wait, this is an audition for the colonel. What?’ So I dug out my suit and thankfully, it still fit,” Boyer said.

The main theme of the campaign is value. A value meal promoted by a value actor — something Boyer finds amusing, saying he’s fine with being a lesser known actor because it lead him to this opportunity.

“Sometimes you beat your head against the door that you think you want to go through, and you’re not noticing that the window is open,” Boyer said.

Boyer is replacing a string of celebrity colonels including Darrell Hammond and Jim Gaffigan.

Boyer said he loves Hagerstown and wants to come back for retirement.

