Written by Nicholas Stoller and Billy Eichner, 'Bros' stars Eichner in the lead as the perpetually single Bobby who, despite his reservations about love and relationships, finds himself falling in love with the gorgeous and unavailable Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane ('Brothers & Sisters'). Together, they take us through an unexpected love story that delivers compelling, intelligent, and entertaining viewing.

A sharp, witty, and very direct monologue delivered by Eichner sets the scene for the film as it oscillates between sharp social commentary and emotional vulnerability from beginning to end. 'Bros' is far from a one-note rom-com and really seeks to explore modern day gay culture, there is much more to the characters than simply two attractive guys falling in love.

“I grew up loving romantic comedies, but I never saw LGBTQ people centred in them, I think it is still rare to see gay men at the centre of a story who are allowed to be multi-dimensional and sort of emotionally complicated,” Billy tells us during his recent trip to promote the film in Australia.

Image © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved

When writing the characters for 'Bros', Billy wanted to allow them to be more than just punch lines, something queer characters are often saved for.

“Whether you're the wacky sidekick or even when I do something like 'Billy On The Street', which I love doing, it's a persona,” he says. “It's not a real, fleshed out human being, and I thought that there was a void to fill there. I was excited about the chance for both my character and Luke's character to get to explore gay men who were more complicated underneath the surface than the person you think they might be when we first are introduced to them in the movie. Because we are all multi-dimensional people and I wanted to explore that.”

Read our review of 'Bros'.

Beyond the main two characters, all of the leading roles throughout the film are LGBTQIA+ actors regardless of the sexuality of their characters. In this way, 'Bros' goes beyond simply adding queer representation to a film and focuses instead on inclusion for the LGBTQIA+ community as actors, creatives, and storytellers by developing a film by queer people for queer people.

“We also had a tonne of queer people behind the camera as well,” Billy reminds us. “I was a producer on the movie. I co-wrote the movie. And I think that historically in Hollywood, on the rare occasions that we did have big movies which centred LGBTQ characters, those were often being told through the prism of straight people, whether it was a straight actor portraying the role or a straight director or straight writer.”

Image © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

“I think it's time for queer people to take control of their own stories so that we can tell them with as much nuance, specificity, and authenticity as possible, in a way that a straight person just might not be able to understand in a more grounded way, in a more multi-dimensional way that queer people just naturally would understand because we actually live these lives.”

Billy’s character Bobby serves as the narrator in the film. Approaching the LGBTQIA+ community from a very cynical place, Bobby is often seen as angry. However, he also allows the film to use a more reflective lens to explore the modern LGBTQIA+ community.

“There is an irony to be found in that the character I'm playing in the movie, part of his journey is to go from being someone who is, as a defence mechanism, against the world and against the challenges he faced. . . And a part of his armour that he's built up in order to shield the world from seeing his own insecurities, part of that armour is his anger. Right. But the story that we watch unfold is about him letting go of that anger in order to be vulnerable and in order to fall in love.

“Literally at the end of the movie the song that I sang, he says 'I'm sick of being angry and I'm sick of being strong, and I know a lot of cynical assholes who will hate this song'. Those are the lyrics of the song you know, and the whole movie is the story about him getting to that place.”

'Bros' received strong reactions from the moment its first trailer was released, but Billy always remained upbeat. “I think the first trailer they put out was basically all framed around my character's opening rant in the movie, which literally happens within the first 60 seconds of the movie and and the movie that follows is very different than that opening rant.”

Finding a balance for the trailer that was both entertaining and true to the movie was always going to be tricky, particularly for a film like 'Bros'. “The trailer can never compare to the movie itself and this movie is very ambitious. There's a lot going on in the movie,” Billy says. “And I think it was always going to be hard to encapsulate that in a trailer while also trying to make people laugh and just very quickly educate people on what the movie was.”

With mainstream queer films on the rise in recent years, it was interesting to know if 'Bros' faced any resistance when it came time to pitch to the studios who were ready to put time and money behind the film. “By the time we brought it to Universal, I think they had been looking for a story like this. I think they wanted to do a big LGBTQ-centric comedy and they were very enthusiastic about the movie from the first day that we ever pitched it to them.

Image © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved

“So, in terms of the experience of making this particular film, I think by the time they green lit it, they wanted it to be everything that we wanted it to be creatively. And they weren't planning on censoring me, and they never did. I kept waiting for Universal to call and say, 'hey, this seems too gay' or 'that's too gay', or 'that's going to alienate straight people', or 'we need to cast more famous straight people in the movie'. But on this particular movie, I was really grateful that that none of those things became an issue.”

For Billy, his experiences of rejection and censorship as a queer person had been present for decades with 'Bros' becoming the exception to the rule of his experiences.

“Prior to making this movie I've been an openly gay actor and comedian my whole career, and I started out over 20 years ago at this point. There are the experiences I've had where I did encounter resistance and obstacles because I was gay or too this or too that. I've had many of those types of experiences in the years, decades, really leading up to 'Bros'. Not so much on 'Bros' itself, but I've had a tonne of those types of experiences that led to where I am today.”

'Bros' is in cinemas now.