Bros cast just wants you to laugh — even if their queer sex scenes remind you of Jackass

With today's arrival of Billy Eichner's new romantic comedy Bros — one of the first major studio rom-coms about a same-sex couple — it's clear there's history to be made for the LGBTQIA+ community. What isn't clear to its writer-star, however, is how (or, more importantly, why) the film's awkwardly funny scenes of intimacy reminded one heterosexual audience member of MTV's doofus-centric stunt show Jackass.

"We had one young, straight, twentysomething guy in Chicago at a focus group," Eichner tells EW in our exclusive Around the Table interview with the film's cast and crew. "I asked him, 'What'd you think of the sex scenes between me and Luke?' They're mostly played for physical comedy, and he said, 'It kind of reminded me of Jackass. It made me uncomfortable, but it was so hilarious. I didn't care, it was just funny.' I thought that was heartwarming and endearing…. if it's funny, they embrace it."

'Bros' cast sits down for EW's 'Around the Table' interview.

Eichner is clearly tickled by the unorthodox comparison, but acknowledges that such a response isn't entirely unwarranted: Outside of Hulu's Happiest Season and Fire Island, audiences haven't had much of a blueprint for how to consume queer rom-coms in the mainstream. And as much as Bros is about representing the quintessentially queer experience in ways that have yet to be seen at the theatrical studio level, Eichner appears pleased that his film — about two "emotionally unavailable" gays, Bobby (Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) who fall in love — looks poised to bridge gaps to other communities.

But the road there wasn't easy, and Bros' success is built on the backs of sidelined LGBTQ performers and projects that came before it. Below, Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Ts Madison, Jim Rash, Miss Lawrence, director Nick Stoller, and producer Judd Apatow exclusively tell EW how they got there in our latest Around the Table discussion. Watch the full video above, and read on for a breakdown of memorable moments from the chat.

0:05 — Eichner and Macfarlane discuss why Bobby and Aaron are at their sexiest when they're raw and real, making them a genuine rom-com couple with relatable flourish. "They're trying to one-up each other about who's more emotionally unavailable when we meet them, but, of course, to fall in love, you have to let your guard down and be vulnerable," Eichner says of their unique attraction. "I think they like each other but are a little scared of each other."

3:08 — RuPaul's Drag Race season 13 winner Symone (who's a "superstar," Eichner says) has a small out-of-drag role in the film that the Billy on the Street performer actively pursued her for, after years of Hollywood "diminishing" the power of drag performers and relegating them to stereotypical characters.

4:54 — Madison remembers feeling Symone's star power when she was a guest judge on the queen's Drag Race season. "Every time that I saw Symone come around the corner to the Main Stage, I just knew she had this thing about her," she recalls. "If anybody from all the seasons has embodied RuPaul, Symone is very, very close, because she's thin and she looks good in blonde, but she has that 'it' thing that RuPaul has, and knows how to turn it on and turn it off, so I was so happy when I knew that she was cast in the movie with me."

9:38 — The cast share their war stories as queer people rising through the industry. "You want the world to see that you're more than this one thing," Eichner says. "LGBTQ characters in mainstream projects have often been painted in very broad strokes. There's little nuance, we're one-dimensional or two-dimensional, the wacky neighbor or the best friend, counseling the leading lady on how her love life can be fulfilled. This was my opportunity to say that we're complicated people, we're hypocritical, we can change on a dime, we don't know what we want, we do know what we want, we're just human."

Ari + Louise Nick Stoller, Billy Eichner, and Luke MacFarlane from 'Bros.'

10:16 — Miss Lawrence remembers working on "quite a few projects" where she was "the only LGBTQ person" on set. "I was met with a lot of pushback. I don't know if the audience is ready for this, they won't get it, I'm not a trans person, I'm not drag, I'm not a masculine-performing gay person, so, what is it?" she says. "It caused me to develop impostor syndrome. It made me show up and be the best at my character…. because I knew what I was up against and powers questioning why I was there or why the character was being exposed."

11:56 — Macfarlane, perhaps best known for his work on several Hallmark holiday romance films, says he was asked to play into gay clichés on a murder-themed TV project. "I won't name it by name, but I was a ballet teacher, and he ended up murdering a girl, but because they wanted me to be the decoy…. the director asked me [to] 'maybe be more flamboyant,' so I was asked to play into a stereotype of a gay person, because we wouldn't think the gay person would end up raping and murdering the ballet student," he explains. "But he did!"

13:03 —"Usually the trans woman is always asked to play the prostitute, she's always asked to be killed by the man or to just have sex," Madison adds. "I remember when I first started working in television, and it was RuPaul who gave me my first break. I did the Gay for Play show…. one of the producers*, while we were on commercial break, was like, 'Oh, Ts, we didn't want you here at first, but you're doing great, we're so glad you're here,'" she says. "In my mind, I had to say, Madison, tear this place up a different way, smile, do your job, and don't let Ru down. But I was ready to tear that place up [like], this doesn't have anything to do with you, Ru wanted me here." [*Madison later clarified to EW that a network crew member — not a member of the World of Wonder production staff — said this to her.]

15:00 — Miss Lawrence notes that micro-aggressive moments on set "can eff up your performance and your concentration" as a queer person. "I worked on a project, and I remember the first day of taping, after the first scene, someone came up to me, like, 'I'm watching the monitor and you are just killing it, and to think, when they told me your part, I was like, yeah right, no way, never!" she says. "And I'm like, what? You're telling me this?" She later recalls another exchange with an actor told their director that they thought her character was "just too much for TV," and she still had to work with them despite knowing their opposition to her role. "I wanted to wear her out, I wanted to fight her," Lawrence continues. "But I knew it was going to be on the queen, they were going to blame the queen, so, I had to sit there and hold my composure."

19:07 — Eichner explains how he booked Debra Messing for a hilarious supporting role as an "ally" donor to for Bobby's LGBTQ+ History Museum. "At one point we said, this museum would have a straight ally who's a celebrity who wants to donate…. I don't know when, but Debra Messing's name popped into our head," explains Eichner. "She seemed like the perfect person. She's been on Billy on the Street a couple times, she was always so game and so fun. She crushes it, the audience bursts out into applause at every screening I've been to."

19:53 — Adds Stoller: "I don't know if this is true, but she told me this is the first time she's cursed on camera. Debra Messing cursing is the funniest thing ever."

20:03 — Eichner also reveals how —and why — he secured A-list cameos from other performers at the end of the film, like Amy Schumer, Ben Stiller, Kenan Thompson, and Seth Meyers, all of whom play historical figures in Bobby's museum. "We liked the idea that, because we're building this LGBTQ History Museum, that Aaron, Luke's character, would automatically think of Night at the Museum because that's his way in, his family loves those movies and for me, my character, those movies are conventional, and Bobby kind of mocks him," Eichner says. "As a way of Bobby, at the end, showing that he's learning to listen and embrace his partner's ideas, we bridged Night at the Museum and the gay museum, and that's where Ben Stiller comes in." Adds Stoller: "They all just said yes, and they're all busy people."

22:31 — There's a scene in the film where Bobby and Aaron go to the movies on one of their first dates. The fictional in-movie movie, The Treasure Inside, is about "two closeted frontiersmen in the California Gold Rush," whom the crew "considered at one point shooting scenes for" with real straight actors in the roles. "We never ended up shooting those scenes, ultimately, I guess they weren't necessary. That would've been fun," says Eichner. "It certainly would take an actor who had a sense of humor about themselves because they were kind of the butt of the joke," Macfarlane adds.

Ari + Louise Dot-Marie Jones, Jim Rash, Miss Lawrence, TS Madison, and Eve Lindley

23:50 — Miss Lawrence envisions what mainstream studio rom-coms might look like when trans women or non-binary people land leading roles in studio-funded love stories. "I do think there will be moments like this, where there's a trans story, a love story, a gender-non-binary love story that happens," Lawrence says. "I think this movie serves endless opportunities for what we can become and what we will now look like in film. I would love to see somebody like myself or one of the girls fall in love with a piece of trade, honey…. then the trade decides he tried this and [thinks he likes] it and he wants to continue, and it turns into, how does he break this to his family? Which, it all turns into a comedy — especially when you're talking about Black folk."

Madison wants audiences to think of her in leading rom-com roles, too: "Imagine me as Julia Roberts, honey, and my knight of shining armor pulls up in a limousine and takes me home."

26:50 — While Bros, at its core, is a specific, nuanced story about LGBTQ romance, Eichner just wants audiences to see the film as a comedy, more than anything. "We had one young, straight, twentysomething guy in Chicago at a focus group. I asked him, 'What'd you think of the sex scenes between me and Luke?'" Eichner recalls. "They're mostly played for physical comedy, and he said, 'It kind of reminded me of Jackass. It made me uncomfortable, but it was so hilarious. I didn't care, it was just funny.' I thought that was heartwarming and endearing…. if it's funny, they embrace it."

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