Bros stars discuss deleted sex act and $30,000 ‘butt rig’
"White Lotus beat us to the punch," says Eichner of the deleted moment.
The stars of the gay rom-com, Bros, have shared details of another cut moment from the one of film’s gay sex scenes, this time involving rimming.
According to Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, and the film’s director, Nicholas Stoller, a scene where the two actors have sex at one point involved a $30,000 ‘butt rig’.
Macfarlane, the recent Attitude digital cover star describes it as “a very expensive prop” that his character goes down on. He recounts two puppeteers maneuvering the contraption from the other side of the bed while he put his mouth on one end.
“We were going to shoot a rim job moment, but then White Lotus beat us to the punch, so we cut that,” Eichner adds, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
The first season of HBO’s The White Lotus saw Murray Bartlett and Lukas Gage take part in a rimming scene that set the internet ablaze for a few days.
Eichner jokes that they had planned to use producer Judd Apatow’s “ass as the model.”
Bros follows perpetually single Bobby (Eichner, who also served as a co-writer on the film) and Aaron (Macfarlane) as they try to iron out their commitment issues and see whether they’re compatible with one another.
Elsewhere in the interview, Eichner says that Bros’ gay sex scenes were intended to show the spectrum of experiences.
He notes: “Sex can be funny, awkward, silly, and absurd, but also romantic and sweet, 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.”
In Bros’ breaking down of toxic masculinity amongst cis, white gay men, the film attempts to send this message with a final note where Eichner described his character is “sick of being angry and I’m sick of being strong, and we watch that story unfold — sex is part of that.”
In rehearsing the sex scene Eichner and Macfarlane tried numerous positions that they “thought might be funny,” some of which were more successful than others.
Eichner recalls “out of nowhere, Luke will take your foot and put it in his face, and you go from there,” adding that “there was some spitting that got cut” from the finished version.
Macfarlane has previously noted that he didn’t want to be spat on during the gay sex scenes; telling Variety “there was a moment when Billy was like, ‘Should we spit on each other?’” to which Macfarlane replied: “Nope”.
Attitude gave Bros four stars, praising the film for “feeling relatable and showing off an authentic example of a gay male experience.”
Speaking to Attitude at the film’s UK premiere, Macfarlane said he would be “absolutely” up for a sequel.
“I don’t know where we would find Aaron and Bobby… If we met them three years afterward or three months after when they have to reassess their relationship,” Macfarlane suggested as a potential follow-up plot.
Bros is in cinemas now.