In major movie news, the first ever major studio rom com starring two gay male leads has just cast actor Luke McFarlane as the love interest for co-star and writer Billy Eichner.

While Kristen Stewart starrer The Happiest Season had been a milestone for queer representation, presenting the first same-sex female led big studio love story, Bros is following right behind. Shooting in September, the film is about two men with commitment issues who attempt to start a relationship together.

While McFarlane, familiar to viewers from the TV series Brothers and Sisters and a range of Hallmark movies, had been in the running for some time, it has only just been announced he snagged the part.

Eichner had been very vocal about wanting to cast a gay actor in the part, as the Billy on the Street comedian felt it was important that LGBTQ+ people got to tell their own stories.

Eichner shared during a recent interview with Deadline, “I’m doing this rom com, about a gay male couple that I wrote and I’m starring in for Universal, that Judd Apatow is producing. Nick Stoller and I co-wrote it. We were just about to shoot it when COVID hit. Hopefully, we’ll shoot it next year, but I’m an EP (Executive Producer) on that and heavily involved in all ways.

“So, I was privy to casting discussions, and I would see when the casting lists were circulating, about which actors to call in for which role. There were so many straight actors on every list to play gay characters. And then, at the beginning before I raised my voice, for the straight characters in the movie, there were never gay actors on the lists for those roles. I saw it with my own eyes. It’s not a two-way street.

“I’m trying to change that, and I also think it’s so important for us to be able to tell our own stories, because we have the lived-in experience, to bring the intellectual nuance of it to the screen. I don’t have to go sit with 30 gay people and try to find out what it’s like to be gay. I know, and no one knows better than me and my friends.

“I think we need to stop undervaluing that, the feeling that if a gay person plays a gay person it’s not acting but if a straight person plays a gay person, we give them an Oscar.”