Billy Eichner’s ‘Bros’ Rom-Com Adds Traiblazing ‘Married… With Children’ Actress Amanda Bearse

Matt Grobar
·3 min read
6

Amanda Bearse (Married…with Children) has found one of the first roles of a newly rebooted screen career in Universal Pictures’ history-making rom-com Bros—the first studio film to feature an entirely LGBTQ+ principal cast, with queer actors taking on queer roles, as well as all heterosexual characters.

She joins an all-star ensemble led by Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane, which also includes TS Madison, Miss Lawrence, Symone, Guillermo Diaz and Guy Branum.

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Bros is billed as a smart, swoony and heartfelt comedy about two gay men—played by Eichner and Macfarlane—maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love…Maybe. They’re both very busy.

Bearse will portray the mother of Macfarlane’s character.

Nicholas Stoller is directing from a script he co-wrote with Eichner. Judd Apatow is producing alongside Stoller and Josh Church, with Eichner exec producing. Universal’s Senior EVP of Production Erik Baiers will oversee the project on behalf of the studio. The film is a co-production of Stoller’s Global Solutions and Apatow’s Apatow Productions, and is scheduled to arrive in theaters on August 12, 2022.

“I’m delighted to be a part of this project. I had no idea how deeply the LGBTQ roots were going to be on this project [until recently]. But leave it to Billy Eichner; I should expect nothing less,” Bearse tells Deadline. “He’s just so on the cutting edge, and this film will be too. I’m glad to be invited to the party.”

Bearse is perhaps best known, on the acting side, for her breakout role as The Bundys’ neighbor Marcy D’Arcy on Fox sitcom Married…with Children. While working on that show in 1993, she became the first actress on primetime television to come out publicly as a lesbian.

Bearse is also known on the TV side for a recurring role on All My Children, along with guest starring roles on Anger Management, Drop Dead Diva and other series. She’s appeared on the film side in Tom Holland’s 1985 horror classic Fright Night, Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation and more.

The actress first found out about Bros, as well as Tapawingo—an upcoming comedy from director Dylan K. Narang, in which she’ll star alongside Jon Heder—prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Before embarking on these projects, she’d put acting on the back burner for around 25 years, both to raise her daughter as a single parent, and to launch a career in directing.

Bearse knew, back in the ’90s, that she’d have to commit wholeheartedly to directing in a bid “to be taken seriously,” at a time when “there weren’t a lot of women behind the television camera.” She’d go on to find great success in that pursuit, directing 31 episodes of Married…with Children, as well as on such series as The Jamie Foxx Show, Dharma & Greg, Reba, MADtv and The Big Gay Sketch Show.

After her daughter grew up, leaving her an “empty nester,” she decided to put roots back down in the SoCal area for the first time in two decades—then coming around to the idea of reconnecting with the craft of acting. “I thought, well maybe, I’ll just give this a go and see what happens, and as long as it stays fun and exciting, I’ll stick with it. I’m just having a good time acting again. It’s really been such a very long time, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it,” the actress shares. “So, it’s just been a great new beginning, is really the best way to put it.”

Bearse is represented by AKA Talent Agency and Billy Miller Management.

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