London actor Luke Macfarlane leads Hollywood's first all-LGBTQ cast
For Luke Macfarlane, making the feature film Bros wasn’t so much about making history as it is about telling true stories.
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For Luke Macfarlane, making the feature film Bros wasn’t so much about making history as it is about telling true stories.
The London native and co-star of the first gay romantic comedy film to find its way to mainstream theatres said it’s about telling the truth.
“At the end of the day, nobody sets out to make a gay movie. They set out to tell their story, and I’m thrilled to be part of telling this story,” said Macfarlane, 42, who has close to two decades of acting on stage and in television and film.
“What I’m more excited about is that it’s a fun film and it’s a really good film.”
Bros had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9 and was well received by critics. It opens in London today.
The film stars Bill Eichner, the first openly gay man to co-write, produce and star in his own major studio film. The film’s other first is having an entirely LGBTQ+ principal cast, including Macfarlane, who has previously starred as a gay man in the TV series Brothers and Sisters, playing the husband to one of the brothers.
Bros tells the story of Bobby Lieber, a New Yorker who hosts a queer history podcast and is director of the first national LGBTQ history museum. At 40, Bobby has given up on the notion of finding the love of his life until he meets Aaron, a macho lawyer played by Macfarlane.
“Gay love stories have been around with us since the beginning of time, so it does feel good to be a part of it,” Macfarlane said.
“But they’ve been stories about suffering, about coming out, or of sickness — Brokeback Mountain, Philadelphia — and they were being told by straight actors. Finally, we’re telling a story about happy endings. . . . I think the goal of this movie is: Can a straight person see themselves through the eyes of someone in a gay relationship and take something from it?”
Starring in a feature film has been among Macfarlane’s career goals.
“I wanted to be on Broadway and I’ve checked that box,” he said of the Tony Award-winning revival of The Normal Heart.
“I wanted to act in television and I’ve checked that box (multiple times).
“But getting a role in a studio feature film has been the most elusive, hardest to achieve. The competition for leading man roles is fierce and I wondered if I’d ever get to check that box.”
Macfarlane is a graduate of Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts. He then graduated from Central secondary school and went on to the Juilliard School for the arts in New York where he starred in productions of Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, The School of Night, Blue Window, The Grapes of Wrath and As You Like It before graduating in 2003.
His late father Thomas was director of student health services at Western University and his mother Penny is a retired mental health nurse. He hasn’t been back to London lately but looks forward to seeing his mother in the not-too-distant future.
It was in high school that Macfarlane found the support he needed to pursue acting as a career.
“My drama teacher, (the late) Ann MacMillan, was the first person who firmly said to me, ‘You can be an actor if you want it,’ ” Macfarlane said. “And I’m forever grateful to her.
“When I was applying to Juilliard, she also said, ‘Now, let’s find the right monologue for you’ and she found the speech in King Lear by Edmund, the Duke of Gloucester’s bastard son.”
Macfarlane is now working on a new television series, Platonic, for Apple TV+, created by Bros director and co-writer Nicholas Stoller, starring alongside Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen.
He said his love of theatre persists.
“I do miss the stage,” said Macfarlane, who lives in Los Angeles.
“I’m just looking for the right project to get back to New York, but there’s nothing in the works right now.”
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