‘Imperfect Women’: Who Is David? Nancy’s Mystery Man Revealed

Several questions still need to be answered after five episodes of Imperfect Women, but we did get one definitive answer on April 8. While the heart of the show lies in the question of who killed Nancy (Kate Mara), we now know the identity of the mystery man she’d been having an affair with before her death. Warning: Spoilers for Episodes 1 and 2 of Imperfect Women ahead!

However, the question still about remains whether or not this man was the one who killed Nancy. On the night she died, Nancy had dinner with her longtime best friends Eleanor (Kerry Washington) and Mary (Elisabeth Moss). While Mary was in the bathroom, Nancy confided in Eleanor that the guy she’d been seeing, who Mary didn’t know about, was still bothering her, even though she’d been trying to end their relationship.

It turned out that this nefarious relationship wasn’t just being kept a secret from Mary, but also Nancy’s husband, Robert (Joel Kinnaman). Robert was the one who called Eleanor in the middle of the night to let her know that Nancy never came home from dinner and wasn’t answering her phone. Eleanor knew Nancy was going to try and end the relationship with her paramour after dinner, but when she couldn’t get in touch with her, she had no choice but to fess up to Robert about Nancy’s secret romance.

Unfortunately, Eleanor didn’t know much about the mystery man in Nancy’s life, but his identity was eventually confirmed. Scroll down for everything we know about the affair, the identity of Nancy’s lover, and what we know about who killed her. We’ll be updating this post with each episode as more information is revealed.

Who was Nancy having an affair with?

While Nancy told Eleanor about the affair, she didn’t give her too many specifics. All Eleanor knew was that Nancy’s lover was a man named David. She didn’t know his last name.

“It’s not you,” Eleanor assured Robert. “She’s unhappy with herself.” She later told Mary that she’d known about the affair for “a couple of weeks,” but didn’t “think it was a big deal” because Nancy assured her she was going to end it.

Who is David?

David is Mary’s husband, Howard (Corey Stoll). This was hinted at the end of Episode 4 at Nancy’s New Year’s Eve party. During the episode, Nancy helped Howard get a job with the ballet she was working on. When he thanked her for the introduction, Howard admitted that his new boss, Phil (Cheyenne Jackson), had confused him with the bartender at the party and kept calling him David. Nancy revealed that this is a flaw of Phil’s and that he had been referring to her as Louise for a while. This sparked an inside joke between Howard and Nancy where they began calling each other David and Louise.

As they started working together, Nancy and Howard’s connection grew. He was a source of comfort for her amid her issues with Robert and as she dealt with childhood traumas. They eventually began sleeping together. However, by the end of the episode, Nancy told Howard she wanted to end things as she and Robert reconciled.

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Earlier in the season, Eleanor told Robert that all she knew about David was that Nancy “met him through work.” When Eleanor was questioned by police, they were confused about how Nancy could’ve met someone at work since she’s a homemaker, and Eleanor explained that her friend did “a lot of philanthropic work” and “sits on the board of several different organizations.” This ended up making sense with Howard being David since Nancy helped him get his job.

In Episode 4, David the bartender, from Nancy’s New Year’s Eve party, was briefly a suspect, not only because of his name, but because of his and Nancy’s flirty banter at the party. They also connected on a deeper level because David lived around where Nancy grew up. However, when he tried to give her his number to meet up for coffee or a drink, Nancy declined and apologized for giving the younger man the wrong impression.

Before that, a painter named Davide Haji Boyette, who went by D.H. Boyette, was the prime suspect. Nancy, who supported artists in her philanthropic work, was listed on Davide’s website as one of his patrons. Eleanor and Robert also realized that a painting Nancy had just put up in her home was done by D.H. Boyette.

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Eleanor was unable to provide any physical characteristics for David based on what Nancy told her, but was convinced that D.H. Boyette was not the man Nancy was having an affair with. “She would have told me if he was Black,” Eleanor insisted. “I am her best and only Black friend. This would have come up.”

By Episode 2, Eleanor was seemingly proven wrong. While she and Robert were at the ballet, he received a photo of Nancy and D.H. Boyette together, her head in the artist’s laps as she looked up at him.

Mary and Eleanor paid D.H. Boyette a visit to get answers. He revealed that Nancy saw his work and reached out because he wanted him to paint her with her scars from a past accident showing. Regarding the photo of him and Nancy, he said, “I don’t even remember the picture. She was barely at the party. I think the guy she brought wasn’t having a good time.”

D.H. Boyette confirmed the guy Nancy was with at the party was white (which, again, tracks with Howard), but did not recall other specifics. However, this put suspicion on a new possible candidate for who David is.

Did David kill Nancy?

This mystery of who killed Nancy will still be ongoing throughout the show, but David was obviously a prime suspect off the bat. Eleanor revealed that Nancy was going to meet up with David after dinner, so he was likely the last known person to have seen her alive. “He was texting her and she was upset,” Eleanor confirmed.

D.H. Boyette was initially named as a person of interest. His alibi for the night Nancy was killed was that he was at an art event, but “he may have left early,” Eleanor told Mary. He was eventually released from jail and insisted that he “did nothing” wrong. It was later revealed that the only reason D.H. Boyette was taken into custody was because Robert’s family leaked the picture of him and Nancy. There was no actual evidence against him.

Of course, the husband is always a suspect, too, so there were eyes on Robert as well. “I have no alibi,” he pointed out to Eleanor. “I was all alone that night until I spoke to you.” Mary also pointed out to Eleanor that Robert “has a temper, especially when he drinks.”

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Eleanor seemingly began suspecting Robert of being the killer by the end of Episode 2 when she found a letter he wrote Nancy where he was apologizing for his “extreme” reaction to finding out she was sleeping with someone else. Eleanor had been under the impression that Robert knew nothing about the affair until she told him after Nancy died, so finding out that he was actually aware his wife had been unfaithful was a shock.

Suspicion on Robert grew at the end of Episode 5 when he found texts from David on Nancy’s phone, leading to an explosive fight. Nancy ended up leaving the house after he blew up on her.

Now that Howard has been identified as David, his whereabouts on the night of Nancy’s murder will be explored in future episodes.

Keep checking back each week because we’ll be updating with new information about David’s identity and more.

Imperfect Women, Wednesdays, Apple TV