To write a barrier-breaking rom-com, actor Billy Eichner looked within

BILLY EICHNER CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS happening. He really never thought this day would come. Even several years into co-writing, producing, starring in, and now promoting his film Bros, it’s still surreal that it exists. “I just look at the screen and I’m like, ‘That’s me?’” he says.

Eichner, 43, isn’t being modest—for a long time, it really was unimaginable. Because Bros is a major studio romantic comedy, produced by Judd Apatow, in the tradition of Knocked Up and Trainwreck, with a revolutionary distinction: it’s not a boy-meets-girl story but a boy-meets-boy one.

is conventional in the sense that all the action is built around the connection of its romantic principals, Eichner’s museum director character Bobby and the more reserved Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane. which hits theaters Sept. 30, is radical in its skewering of the finer points of gay culture, like Grindr etiquette and poppers, as well as its repeated references to LGBTQ history.