Behind the Masc4Masc mask in romcom Bros

Bros, co-written by actor Billy Eichner (Craig Middlebrooks in Parks and Recreation) and director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is a romantic comedy for the boys.

“I wanted a movie that showed in a very funny, but realistic, way what happens when two adult gay men – Bobby (Billy Eichner) and Aaron  (Luke Macfarlane) – who both pride themselves on not needing a relationship fall in love for the first time,” says Billy Eichner. “Men in general, and especially gay men, pride themselves on being strong and self-reliant. And in terms of the LGBTQ+ world, we’ve all had to be really strong on the outside. We want to be tough, and we don’t want to need anyone else. So, what happens when two men like that fall for each other?”  

“But Billy, where would you get such a crazy idea?” you might ask. Read on as the Bros team break it down like the Eleventh Brick at Stonewall (which, by the way, is the title of Bobby’s podcast in Bros).

Stream Bros on Showmax now.

Tough love

One of the key inspirations for the story came from one of Billy’s sketches in his “street interview” show, Billy on the Street. “I wore khakis and a sports jersey and a backwards baseball cap. And I was going up to people and doing this bro voice and totally changed my demeanour. It went viral, and people wrote all these think-pieces about how it was a commentary on masculinity. In real life, a good friend of mine – a gay friend of mine, this is someone who’s been a good friend of mine for 20 years and has never, ever hinted at any sort of attraction to me – saw me in the sketch and, without any irony or sarcasm, he said, ‘You should dress like that, because you’re really hot in that mode.’ And I was like, ‘Do you know what you’re saying right now? So, you think I should completely alter my voice, body and everything about me in order to seem hot?’”

“I think he thought he was complimenting me. And I thought, there’s something to this, because it’s funny, and it’s also kind of messed up. And that inspired the whole movie.” 

A top-down remodelling

Coming of age in the 1990s and 2000s, Billy claims that he and his friends didn’t struggle as much as previous generations had to accept their sexual preferences. “The struggle was: ‘Well, I’m gay, and that’s cool. But I still want to be a man.’ The struggle was with masculine versus feminine or masculine versus flamboyant. Like, ‘I’m gay, but I still want to be a bro,’” he says. “I don’t feel this way anymore. But I certainly did. And it’s something that was ingrained in gay men in my generation.” 

It’s so deeply ingrained in him that Billy admits he isn’t always aware of what he’s doing. “All my agents are straight men, and my lawyers are straight men, and my manager is a straight man. I had an assistant for a really long time who was a co-producer on Bros and she said to me, ‘Whenever they call you, your voice drops two octaves.’ And I didn’t even realise it. It’s very indicative of all the code switching that we’ve done over the years. It’s just a part of our lives that we have to constantly play that game of, ‘How should I behave in front of this straight person in order to not alienate them?’” 

Now imagine finding yourself playing that same game with someone just because you fancy them…

Meet Bobby

New Yorker Bobby (Billy Eichner) works on the board of the LGBTQ+ Museum and that’s just one of the ways he drives support for his community. “He has a podcast, and he writes books and gives speeches. He tried out for Queer Eye. He’s very opinionated and bold and confident. He’s very outspoken, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues and being militant about how we’ve been left out of history books and how children are not educated about LGBTQ+ history,” says Billy. 

Given Bobby’s passion for education, the Bros team had to make sure that the issues the board members discuss, and the queer history mentioned in the film, are all grounded in historical research. LGBTQ+ historian and author Eric Cervini came aboard as a consultant. And production designer Lisa Myers, who used the Newark Museum of Art as the primary location to film Bros museum scenes, adds, “I worked with three LGBTQ+ historians, making sure that the images in the Pavilion represented a wide variety of LGBTQ people throughout history.” 

Bobby has too much on his plate to leave room for relationship drama. He’s staunchly single – despite all his friends coupling (or throupling) up, getting married and raising kids – until he feels that special spark with someone unexpected. Enter Aaron. 

Meet Aaron

Estate lawyer Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) is so straight-coded that a builder could use him as a spirit level. He’s enjoying his life of passing privilege, while being dismissive of all the other LGBTQ+ people – the courageous ones who are actually on the front lines of making sure that everyone, including him, is free to love without shame. He just thinks they’re being loud and dramatic. “Aaron is somebody who has figured out a way to sort of be gay in the world, but maybe is not fully aware of the greater picture, historically, of where gays fit into our society,” explains Luke. “He’s a reminder for myself that we all have growing to do.”

For the romance to spark, though, there has to be more to Aaron than just good looks and bad attitude. “There is a fascination with that type of Bro-y behaviour. And Aaron is the embodiment of that in the gay community,” admits Billy. “But it couldn’t just be about that. He also had to have a lot of heart and keep Bobby on his toes. He couldn’t just have someone as his partner who he could steamroll over.” 

Get onboard

With their mismatched cute couple in place, Bros aims to deliver queer comedy, without using queer people as comic relief. There’s representation in every colour of the race, gender and sexuality rainbow on the LGBTQ+ Museum board – including Wanda (Miss Lawrence), Angela (Ts Madison), Cherry (Dot-Marie Jones), Robert (Jim Rash), and Tamara (Eve Lindley). 

“To be put in a box for decades, and for so much of our history, for centuries, to not have been celebrated in a colourful way, in a diverse way, to not be recognised that we are every shape, that we are a multitude of things – it is heartbreaking. It feels good to know that after this movie, that will be no longer,” says Ts Madison. “We are human people. We have human experiences. We feel, we have emotions. We know what love feels like. We know what heartbreak feels like, just like everybody in this world.” 

Luke adds, “If I had been able to see someone like myself on camera growing up, it would have changed the course of my life and the course of my happiness. That’s why this movie is important. It’s for the generation coming up, for them to just see people and say, ‘That’s also okay.’”

Everybody loves Bros

Bros is for anyone who loves a romantic comedy with a difference. “We didn’t set out to make a niche movie that’s only for a specific community,” says co-producer Josh Church. “We want the movie to speak to the LGBTQ+ community, but this movie will have an impact because it’s going to reach an audience of people who are just coming to see a romcom, and they’re going to see stories that they haven’t seen before. They’re going to see performers they’ve never seen before. They’re going to hear jokes they’ve never heard before. And hopefully, everybody comes away from it realising that we should be looking for these stories through every part of society, from every person, from every group.” 

The cherry on top? Will & Grace star and romcom queen Debra Messing playing herself, as a potential donor to the museum. “Playing Debra Messing might be the most challenging part I’ve played,” she quips.

Stream Bros on Showmax now.