Out actor Luke Macfarlane has weighed
in on the debate about who should play queer roles.
Macfarlane, a staple of Hallmark
movies, appears opposite Billy Eichner in the gay rom-com Bros.
The film was a hit with critics and
moviegoers, racking up a 90% audience score on movie aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes, but a disappointment at the box office.
Speaking with UK LGBTQ glossy Attitude,
Macfarlane acknowledged some of the film's lapses.
“As [producer] Judd [Apatow] has
said, it’s the best-reviewed movie he’s ever made, and in all the
metrics of audience appreciation, the scores, and data, it’s done
very well. The box office was not, however, what I had hoped and
dreamed it would be,” Macfarlane
said.
“I think it’s a really funny movie.
Maybe we could have changed the marketing, but I don’t think it was
that,” he said, referring to criticism that the film was too
heavily marketed to a mainstream audience. “Maybe it’s what we
often say about living in a bubble because everybody I know really
liked it. It’s a very big country, the United States.”
Macfarlane, who has played numerous
straight characters, including his upcoming part in Apple TV+'s
Platonic, gave his opinion on who should play queer roles.
“I am very uncomfortable with putting
rules down about who can play what in general,” Macfarlane said.
“And the performances that I’ve seen of the straight male actors
playing gay have been some of the most moving. As a young gay man
watching Brokeback Mountain and being gutted watching
Philadelphia with my father, and him understanding that
America’s father, Tom Hanks, was able to inhabit something and give
it so much dignity was so important.”
“So, I would never want to say who
can play what and I’ve said this before, but I’m super excited to
see Bradley Cooper play [the late gay American conductor] Leonard
Bernstein. It’s gonna be amazing. He’s the perfect guy to play
that. And I don’t think he’s gay,” he said.