Yahoo Movies Billy Eichner on How His Late Parents' Support Made Groundbreaking Gay Rom-Com Bros Possible
As a kid growing up in Queens, New York, comedian and actor Billy Eichner had a love of pop culture that was only fostered by his supportive parents, Debbie, who worked for a phone company, and Jay, a tax auditor.
They took him to see Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner and Madonna in concert. They brought him to the theater. And they even let him have a Broadway-meets-pop stars bar mitzvah. "The way they encouraged me and just believed in me, that gave me a confidence to feel like I could go after my dreams," Eichner says in the new issue of PEOPLE.
"Their support meant everything, really. And I think it's carried me through to this day," he says. "They always made me feel like there's no reason what I wanted shouldn't happen."
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Sadly, both of Eichner's parents passed on more than a decade ago, so they didn't get to see their son's trailblazing moment: Bros, which Eichner cowrote and stars in, is the first gay romantic comedy to be released in theaters by a major Hollywood studio.
"It's such a big deal for me," says Eichner, who broke out on the 2011-17 unscripted series Billy on the Street. "It's a big deal for LGBTQ folks in Hollywood, for viewers and also for straight [people], who still make up the majority of the audience."
The 44-year-old actor's career has slowly but steadily been on the rise, thanks to roles on Parks & Recreation and his own biting Hulu comedy Difficult People. But Bros takes his stardom to a whole new level.
Eichner plays a high-strung museum director who falls for a hot-but-relationship-averse lawyer (Hallmark movie staple Luke Macfarlane) in the film, which skewers the well-worn tropes of romantic comedies like You've Got Mail while also following those same tropes with a big knowing wink to the audience.
Ari + Louise
Add in the envelope-pushing humor of director and cowriter Nick Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and producer Judd Apatow (Bridesmaids) along with send-ups of gay culture, and the result is a unique comedy with wide appeal.
Bros is also groundbreaking in that Eichner cast " an incredibly funny, delightful, endearing" group of actors from the LGBTQ+ community to play all the roles. "Even the straight characters," Eichner notes.
In addition to Eichner and Macfarlane, the movie stars Chicago Fire alum Monica Raymund, former Married… With Children star Amanda Bearse, Scandal favorite Guillermo Díaz, RuPaul's Drag Race winner Symone, activist and TV personality Ts Madison, and Saturday Night Live standout Bowen Yang, among many others.
"It's a cliche to say it's surreal, but it really does feel surreal," Eichner says of getting Bros made. "When [the studio] greenlit the movie, I couldn't believe it. But then I thought, 'Oh, they're never actually going to make it.' Then they decided to make it. Then we were walking around Manhattan shooting a romantic comedy like all those romantic comedies I grew up loving."
Bros is in theaters nationwide Sept. 30.
For more on Billy Eichner, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on stands now.
