Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane don’t shy away from sex scenes in Bros. (Universal)
Bros nearly featured a giant, $30,000 ‘butt rig’ that was used to shoot a sex scene for the romantic comedy.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane and director Nichols Stoller explained how they approached the sex scenes in the film.
The groundbreaking gay sex scene comes as a big step in Bobby (Eichner) and Aaron’s (Macfarlane) relationship, with comedic layers added as Bobby tried to be as ‘masc’ as possible, having seen Aaron gazing at a group of American football players in Central Park.
“I said to Nick and Luke, I was like, this movie won’t be complete until Luke’s entire fist is in my mouth, and we went from there,” Eichner recalled. As a response to the football players, his character begins slapping Aaron.
The $30,000 ‘butt rig’ was used to simulate Macfarlane “going down on” Bobby, though it eventually got cut from the film.
“We were going to shoot a rim job moment, but then White Lotus beat us to the punch, so we cut that,” Eichner told EW.
He joked that they used producer Judd Apatow’s “ass as the model”, which Macfarlane remembers trying to put his mouth on while “two puppeteers” moved the model from the other side of the bed.
“Sex can be funny, awkward, silly, and absurd, but it also serves the story, because the sex that these guys have, it evolves over the course of the movie as their relationship becomes more intimate and vulnerable,” Eichner continued, speaking about shooting the sex scene.
“Both of these guys are trying so hard to be strong at the beginning of the movie, and I say at the end that I’m sick of being angry and I’m sick of being strong, and we watch that story unfold – sex is part of that.”
He concluded by saying that experimenting with positions was the key to finding the comedy in Bros.
“We were right about some of those, we were wrong about some of those, and all of a sudden, you know, out of nowhere, Luke will take your foot and put it in his face, and you go from there,” Eichner remembered, before interjecting that “there was some spitting that got cut” from the finished version.
Release the spit cut!