The rise of the gay rom-com: Fire Island 's Joel Kim Booster & Bros ' Billy Eichner redefine the genre

Ryan Pfluger for Entertainment Weekly

Billy Eichner and Joel Kim Booster just want to talk about gay icon Cherry Jones, okay?

Enjoying the shade (no, not that kind) on a hot Monday afternoon in Santa Clarita, Calif., the actors are taking advantage of feeling among family (yes, that kind). "It makes for a more comfortable environment, you know? You don't have to code-switch," Eichner says of being surrounded by a queer photographer, crew, and journalist on the set of EW's 2022 Pride cover shoot. "I've been really lucky and worked on some great shows, but I was so often the only gay person around." His fellow cover star agrees: "It's great working with so many queer people, because someone finally gets our references," says Booster. "I can talk about Cherry Jones and people understand who that is."

Experiencing that shorthand at work may not be commonplace for the former Billy on the Street colleagues (Booster was a writer on the Eichner-fronted show), but it was certainly the case on their most recent projects. Booster, 34, stars in the Pride and Prejudice-inspired romantic-comedy Fire Island, hitting Hulu on June 3; and Eichner, 43, will headline the first gay rom-com ever released by a major studio when Universal's Bros hits theaters Sept. 30.

"Comedy is still largely a male heterosexual space, and both of us are used to navigating that for the majority of our careers, so this was a huge change of pace for me," Booster says of Fire Island, which he also wrote. "It's a change of pace for me too," adds Eichner, who wrote his film with director Nicholas Stoller (Get Him to the Greek, Neighbors 2). "I mean, the whole cast of Bros is openly LGBTQ. I've never had that experience. I've done Ryan Murphy shows, which were close, but even on those shows…"

Eichner trails off with a laugh, one of many the two comedians share over a chat with EW about what it's like being queer in Hollywood; why they won't stand for people pitting them — or their movies — against each other; and, of course, Margot Robbie.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We're technically here to celebrate Pride and your movies, but this is also a reunion of sorts.

JOEL KIM BOOSTER: Billy was my first comedy boss. You literally…

BILLY EICHNER: Is that true?

BOOSTER: You are literally the first person who hired me to write on a comedy show — and from a submission packet! It was totally like you pulled me from obscurity into the Billy on the Street [writers'] room. I still remember the first Zoom call I ever did was when I interviewed with you for that.

EICHNER: Oh, my God. I don't remember that [call].

BOOSTER: Oh, I remember it, because it was life changing for me. [That job] really spoiled me, because there were a lot of gay people in that room.

EICHNER: It was mostly gay men and women.

BOOSTER: It was so free. The specificity of the references that you were asking us to pull from, that kind of stuff was what I was always told to cut down on because no one would get it, no one would think it was funny. Suddenly that muscle was what you were asking me to exercise, and it was great. I'll never forget that time in my life.

EICHNER: Oh, that makes me happy…. I was Joel Kim Booster's first. Imagine.

It seems like you were able to really make the show you wanted to make.

EICHNER: Billy on the Street was so special in that way because it had such a slow burn, in terms of popularity, and we were never on a huge cable network. [The sketch/talk/game show aired on Fuse for three seasons (2011-14) and then TruTV for two more (2015-17).] It took off online, and that meant I really got to control the environment. I had a ridiculous amount of control over that, for someone who wasn't particularly famous themselves. So I populated the writers' room with people who got it, and I remember Joel actually came up with many funny things. But one of the funniest things we ever did was an obstacle course called Escape Margot Robbie's Moment.

BOOSTER: My claim to fame.

EICHNER: I remember it was in your submission packet, and I was like, "Okay. That is genius, and that person gets it."

BOOSTER: We never did Escape Margo Robbie's Moment.

EICHNER: No. We're still in it…. We're going to have to do another one for Barbie when it comes out.

Ryan Pfluger for Entertainment Weekly Billy Eichner

That writers' room also had your Difficult People costar (and series creator) Julie Klausner and Guy Branum, who costars in Bros.

EICHNER: It's cool because we were mainly queer people and women, and now the industry has caught up with that Billy on the Street writers' room, which, as Joel was saying, was a very rare thing at the time and now thankfully isn't so unique.

BOOSTER: You didn't water anything down. And I don't remember us ever really being asked to [by the networks] either. I think it was the start of what I think both of us are doing in our movies, where the comedy is in the specificity. It's not about trying to shape the comedy so that straight people get every joke. You trust the audience to be smart enough to meet you where you are, and I think Billy on the Street was a great example of that.

EICHNER: That's part of the code switching we all had to do — or we were convinced we had to do [in our careers]. It was suggested to us as gay comedians who had a gay sensibility, whatever that means, that we needed to think about what a straight person, specifically a straight man, would be able to connect to or understand. We've been having test screenings for Bros all over the country that have been going really well, but I was like, "Do you think when they tested When Harry Met Sally they ever said, 'God. I hope a gay person can relate to this'?" Never. I bet even with Brokeback Mountain, no one cared how a gay person reacted to it in a test screening. Right? It never works in the reverse.

BOOSTER: No. And it's insulting to straight people too, honestly, because it's like they can't suspend their disbelief. Like, I've never been to f—ing Mordor, but I love The Lord of the Rings. You know?

EICHNER: Watching a movie about another culture that you're not totally familiar with is what makes it interesting, right? That's what makes it fresh. Otherwise, you're just watching the same straight rom-com bulls--- over and over again, and I love straight rom-coms, but it's very repetitive.

Speaking of, did you both grow up loving rom-coms?

BOOSTER: Yeah. I mean, rom-coms really messed me up, I think, expectation-wise. I worshiped at the altar of Nora Ephron growing up.

EICHNER: Me too.

BOOSTER: I loved When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail, and all of them. [Fire Island] is a love letter to rom-coms…. I think it's hard too, because you can't make a rom-com now without commenting on rom-coms, almost.

EICHNER: Totally. I grew up loving all of those movies. I remember seeing Moonstruck in the theater — I'm older than Joel — with my parents. Pretty Woman. Dirty Dancing, I saw twice in the theater. All the Nora Ephron movies. Broadcast News is my favorite movie of all time.

—Billy Eichner

Is that where the idea for Bros came from?

EICHNER: The idea for Bros came from Nick Stoller — who is straight, unfortunately — and that's interesting because the reason it had to come from Nick is that…. Growing up, I used to watch Sleepless in Seattle and think, "Oh. I could be Tom Hanks." I didn't have any self doubt when I was a kid. It was getting to Hollywood in my 20s and early 30s where that self doubt was kind of placed in me by other people suggesting that that could never happen for me. So of course the idea for Bros wouldn't start with me, because I didn't think it was realistic, unless we were going to film it for $5 on my phone. [Bros producers] Judd Apatow and Nick Stoller make big studio comedies, and they kept telling me, "We're going to do this with Universal." And I said, "No. We're not. You guys don't get it. I've been gay for over 20 years in this business, and Universal's not doing this movie." And then they did, and that was amazing because I had been convinced over the years that that just wasn't possible.

BOOSTER: Because it's a risk, and Hollywood — [pauses, looks directly into camera] which is amazing, and I love Hollywood and everyone who works in Hollywood — is risk averse. They're not super willing to go out on a limb if there's not something that exists as proof of concept. The scary thing for both of us is that we are sort of proof of concept. There's a lot of pressure that goes into making movies like this, at this point, in where we're at with representation.

Universal greenlit Bros and Searchlight Features purchased the script for the Quibi pilot that became Fire Island, but did you face conversations about having to water down your films as they went into production?

EICHNER: I'm happy to say there were no big arguments about making things palatable for a straight audience. Then again, one of the first things I said to everyone involved was, "We cannot just make When Harry Met Sally and swap in two guys. That is not how gay relationships function." And by the way, it's 2022. I don't even think most straight relationships function that way.

BOOSTER: Searchlight was great about backing off when they didn't understand a joke. That was the big thing for us, that we weren't concerned about making sure every joke hit for every straight person in the audience. There are references that are just going to go over their heads, and that's fine. And they were surprisingly comfortable with allowing that to happen…. There were a lot of questions about what certain things meant…. Sex is a part of our culture, in a sort of intrinsic way, and we don't shy away from that in the movie. The only thing that they said was, "You can have as many butts as you want, but no pole." So that was the one battle that we lost, which I'm happy with.

EICHNER: That's what sequels are for.

Ryan Pfluger for Entertainment Weekly Joel Kim Booster

Was there some education on Bros as well?

EICHNER: Definitely. They were fully on board, but they just didn't know certain things. They had heard of Grindr, but straight guys aren't sitting around looking at Grindr, unless you're some closeted senator. So I had to be like, "All right, well, this is what it is." Some of it was very eye-opening for them, certain things that exist in the community regarding monogamy, or the lack thereof. But we also have to be careful not to generalize the gay community either, because we're not a monolithic group, and there are some gay couples that play by those more sort of old-fashioned heteronormative rules, and then there are straight couples that don't, right?

BOOSTER: What you were just saying about generalizing the gay community…. I'm far more worried about that than I am about the straight response to the movies. But that's why I'm so relieved that your movie is coming out, and that things like Heartstopper and Keiynan Lonsdale's movie My Fake Boyfriend are coming out around the same time. There's so many. I think that we, as a community, have been so starved for stuff like this that when one thing does come out, it's like, "Oh, my God. If it doesn't represent all of us in one season of television or one movie, then we hate it so much." I get that impulse, but I'm so relieved that if you hate my movie, you have another one coming out in September to have another shot at, and then hopefully even more. At the very least, I hope these movies encourage people to tell their own stories — or to find an artist who resonates with them and support them until they're able to make their own movies.

EICHNER: What Joel's saying is entirely accurate. We've gotten so few of these movies over the years, and they've so often been told by straight people or embodied by straight actors. So when movies like these do happen, there's such a burden to represent every single person in the LGBTQ community, and everyone from every economic strata and every different ethnicity and background and generation — and in an hour-and-40-minute rom-com. I don't think they had to worry about this on the Lost City set.

BOOSTER: Straight white guys do not get asked how their movies represent the entire straight white male experience. They just don't. And it's an expectation…. We take it seriously, but it also feels deeply challenging and a little unfair, honestly.

EICHNER: It's more than a little unfair.

BOOSTER: I'll know that we've really made progress in this realm when we can release our movies and they aren't brought up in the same sentence as one another. It's so frustrating when I see stuff like, "Oh. I'm excited for Bros, but not Fire Island," or vice versa. It's, like, my movie has nothing to do with your movie. Why can't you just be excited for my movie or be excited for his movie without having to make it oppositional? Because it's not. I don't feel that way.

EICHNER: Not at all. Bowen Yang is in both movies!

BOOSTER: He connects the cinematic universes. [Laughs] I think the only reason that people like me and Bowen and [Fire Island costar] Matt Rogers and the entire class of gay comedians that I consider my peers and friends can exist is because people like Billy stopped pulling the ladder up behind them. I think, for a long time, there was this attitude of, "There can only be one of us who is successful. And if it's going to be one, it's going to be me." And I think that it started to change with people like Billy, and I think that is the only reason why it feels comfortable to be friends with the people that I'm friends with now.

EICHNER: Seeing how bold this new generation is inspires me. They're so defiant and so unapologetic. And I was never apologetic, but I had self doubt about it, because when I was coming up in the business, it was not this gay friendly. But now, this new generation pushes me. We're all making it easier for each other to be honest about our lives — because there's power in numbers, and now there are so many of us.

And you cast a lot of them in your films.

BOOSTER: We both have a lot of gay friends. And the experiences within my friend group are so varied, in terms of all those questions we were discussing earlier: monogamy and non-monogamy, body image issues, race. All of those questions are just things that I live. My movie is so much about my friendship with Bowen, and what it is to navigate gay spaces that are oftentimes largely white. As two Asian guys, it's not always easy. But I wanted my movie to also feel like a celebration of gay friendship too, because when there's only one of us in a movie, you don't get to see that aspect.

EICHNER: I thought the ensemble of Hugh Grant's friends in Notting Hill was one of the best parts of that movie, so I really wanted to make sure we had a really big, funny, eclectic ensemble. And because it's a major studio film and we were getting a certain amount of money for it, I wanted to take advantage of that. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't only going to be a great opportunity for me selfishly, but that I was giving a ton of other openly LGBTQ actors and trans actors and non-binary actors an opportunity to shine too. And by the way, our community isn't so perfect. Not at all. We're catty. We're bitchy. We're this. We're that. We're humans. And so if we're all queer, it allows us to poke fun at ourselves too.

—Joel Kim Booster

What about the people outside the community who just want to hate on your films for existing?

BOOSTER: To paraphrase Lady Gaga, there can be a hundred comments on Twitter, and there's going to be one that is so nasty that you fixate on for the entire day. But I think that is expected. But, by and large, the reaction for both of our movies has been mostly positive…

EICHNER: Really positive.

BOOSTER: But I have personally given my boyfriend my Twitter password, so I'm not engaging with any of that anymore.

EICHNER: Wow. I don't have a boyfriend, so I have to engage on Twitter. All right? Again I'm being punished for being single. I have to tweet for myself.

On the other side of the coin, what has been the most rewarding feedback you've gotten since your trailers came out?

BOOSTER: Honestly, it's the gay Asian people that come up to me saying, "I've never felt seen in this way before on screen." The movie is very specifically about me and Bowen, but I think that it does translate to a lot of people who have similar experiences — and so if it's touching that with those people, I think I've done my job, and I'm really proud of that.

EICHNER: I've been very pleasantly surprised, and relieved, by how much people are laughing at the movie. There are all the historic things about it — and I've also been surprised by how moved people are by the movie — but really I just wanted it to be funny.

You've conquered the rom-com, so what other genre are you ready to tackle?

BOOSTER: I know this is where we differ, but I would love a gay superhero.

EICHNER: This is where we differ, but I support it. I support it, I just wouldn't be in it.

BOOSTER: It's gonna happen eventually…

Director and Photographer: Ryan Pfluger; DP: Rachel Bickert; 1st AC: Melissa Baltierra; 1st Photo Assistant: Nicol Biesek; 2nd Photo Assistant: Travis Chantar; Gaffer: Monty Sloan; Swing: Mike Tellup; Key Grip: Taylor Reick; Stylist: Oliver Vaughn; Stylist Assistant: Sophia Nieser; Groomer (Joel): Tracey Raffelson; Groomer (Billy): Jason Schneidman/Solo Artists; Executive Producer: Tyler Duuring/Avenue B, Inc.; Producer: Gavin Andersen/Avenue B, Inc.; Production Assistants: Joy Sahyoun, Kein Milledge, and Lucas Houser; Photo Director: Maya Robinson; Creative Director: Chuck Kerr; Video Editor: Dri Sommer

Fashion credits — Joint cover: Joel: Shirt by Sandro; Tank by COS; Pants by BODE; Shoes by Dr. Martens. Billy: Shirt by Collina Strada; Tee and Pants by COS; Shoes by Converse x Kim Jones. Joel (water): Suit by Sandro; Tank by Fendi. Joel (deck): Shirt vintage; Tank by Collina Strada; Shorts by Weisheng Paris. Billy: Shirt by Sandro; Shorts by Maria Karimi

Related content:

• Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang envision the gay Pride and Prejudice in Fire Island trailer

• Billy Eichner's Bros rom-com will have all-LGBTQ main cast — even the straight roles