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Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for sticking with us on The Takeaway. Now, as many of you know, in my day job, I'm a college professor teaching undergraduate political science students. It's not uncommon to find myself sitting across the desk from a smart, passionate, young person who's thinking about going to law school, not because they love it, but because it just seems like the next thing they should do. Me, I try to talk them out of it.

Guy Branum: I went to law school. I took the bar in California and I practiced a little bit, but I realized that I did not like what I was doing enough to do it well enough to be good at it. I went off to try to find something that I loved more and could put more of myself into.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's my new secret tool for the don't-go-to-law-school conversation. He's also my next guest, Guy Branum. Guy is a multifaceted comedian, actor, and writer. He's both a star of and a co-producer of a very funny new gay rom-com, Bros.

Guy Branum: Bobby, I had sex with that 65-year-old.

Bobby: Jesus, he's ripped.

Guy Branum: I know, it's like they injected steroids into Dumbledore.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Bros has an all LGBTQ+ principle cast and stars Billy Eichner. Guy Branum is his raunchy, funny best friend. I started my conversation with Guy, not in the world of comedy, but in the profession of the law.

Guy Branum: One of the best things that ever happened to me was a political science graduate student, when I was an undergrad, essentially, later in the semester of my senior year, gave us a scared straight talk of that sort, of, "If you go to law school, you will owe so much money that you will have to practice and you will hate it." I probably should have listened to him and saved three years of my life.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about Bros. I do have to say that even the first time that I saw the trailer, I cracked up and then simultaneously thought, "Oh, somebody's going to get in trouble."

Guy Branum: It's a really funny R-rated comedy directed by Nick Stoller, who directs Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors. It's produced by Judd Apatow. It's a really funny movie. It is not the sanitized presentation of gay male life that you've gotten from a lot of things intended for the mainstream public in the past. It's a really funny movie. I feel like the movie has a little bit gotten lost in the studio talking so much about how important it is and how great the work they're doing is and not really mentioning as much how funny it is.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm going to do exactly that and then we're going to come back to how funny it is. Let's talk about that because I'm thinking here of the battles for representation of queer folk as not just the funny sidekick. There was this moment of complete exclusion of queer folk in media or pop culture, and then this inclusion in spaces where it was always like you get to be the funny sidekick. There was an emphasis on like, "Let's be more serious and fully human," and then, "Oh, yes, that's righty, fully human people rom-coms." I'm wondering about that way of re-injecting humor and hilarity in the fully human life of queer folk.

Guy Branum: For such a long time, it's been possible to represent gay people without us being involved. Frequently, you've had programs, movies, TV where a gay character was played by a straight actor, written and directed by straight cis people. We've had such problem of incorrectly gendered cis people playing trans characters. That is, from the starting place, a real problem with having representation that is honest and reflects people's lived lives. People are like, "An actor's an actor. They should be able to act." In a lot of these cases, they should have acted better because a lot of what we were getting was cliche and stereotype.

Frequently, many marginalized groups are treated as frivolous, are treated as unimportant, and that's been a huge problem for the queer community. The response to that in media so much was trying to make us seem important. Frequently, what was leveraged to make us seem important was our tragedy, that if you were a straight cis person watching something about a gay or trans person, you needed to be doing your homework, you needed to be doing something important. That meant that you needed to be watching something about a gay or trans person getting oppressed, or beaten up, or being sad.

Marginalization is part of our lives, but most of our lives are pretty fun. [chuckles] It's nice to have movies that can embrace queer and trans joy while still being interesting to a larger audience.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is my dear friend Michael Asner, who has repeatedly said to me, "I don't do sad gay." He's like, "There's plenty of people to do sad gay. That is not what I do."

Guy Branum: We're called gay. There is a reason that we are called that. It is because in the face of all of the terrible things we've had to deal with, we have still found ways of making our worlds beautiful, and wonderful, and fun. It is that resilience of us as a people that I am most proud of. That's what Bros is. It's a really fun movie that is honest about the baggage that a lot of queer people are carrying around with them and tries to explore that and how being a grown up means learning to get past that in the ways that are hurting yourself and the people around you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, your character is Henry and he's the best friend in Bros who just keeps popping up at all the funny times with advice. Talk to us a little bit about Henry.

Guy Branum: Henry started out in the script for Billy and Nick as the person who represents that happiness with your life and happiness with romantic life doesn't need to involve long-term relationships. One of the things about the queer community is we have always had to find different shapes of relationships for ourselves because our romantic dynamics are different and because the government and the outside world didn't recognize the relationships that we had.

Billy and Nick were really intent on having this be a romantic comedy that represented different kinds of love and different kinds of happiness. Other than that, I'm really lucky because I'm the only person in the movie who plays a role that is sometimes played by a gay person in a movie. Rupert Everett's done it, I did it in a Natalie Portman movie 10 years ago. The job of being the protagonist friend who stands in one place and slings jokes is really well-suited to my acting level.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Did you actually work on writing these jokes?

Guy Branum: My job as co-producer was to be there onset writing jokes. On Judd Apatow movies, there's always space for that person to riff things in the moment. One of the things about this movie is Nick and Billy had worked on it for two years and were ready to shoot the movie when COVID happened and the movie got shut down for another two years. They had been working on the script for four years. It had so many great jokes in it, it had so many great moments.

Yes, I pitched a couple of jokes that were in the movie. I don't know that any of them ended up being my jokes for my character. I did that. One of the other things I was just trying to do was create-- One of my jobs was helping Nick, who was the director and who is straight, just understand basic things about gay life when Billy wasn't around. I was there to be his [unintelligible 00:08:18], if you will, but also just to encourage the people on set to take this opportunity to riff and find jokes and have fun.

One of the really cool things about this being a cast that is entirely LGBTQ+, all of the gay and trans roles were played by gay and trans people and all of the straight roles were played by gay and trans people. What was cool about that is everyone was able to relax and understand that you're not going to be the butt of the joke. That this is comedy that is coming from your perspective, not you as an object. Really trying to help everyone understand that they got to find jokes in the moment too.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Queer communities, gay communities, even gay male, even gay male cis gendered communities are nonetheless diverse in a wide variety of ways. It's interesting to hear you say, "You could relax, you aren't going to be the butt of the joke," because you've also written and talked and tweeted about all these other intersections. Other intersections of gay identity, including size, including, again, questions of trans identity within queer communities, race. Talk to me about some of the floating critiques out there, but also how you see what this movie's up to.

Guy Branum: One of the coolest things about this movie is that I am a very fat person and a gay man, and so I don't get cast in much for acting work because there aren't a lot of stories that contemplate a person like me. There certainly aren't a lot of stories that contemplate a person like me as having a sexuality that is fun and dynamic and not just a punchline. Being asked to portray this role, it was really exciting. It's just not an opportunity hat I get that much.

Billy, after he convinced the studio and the producers involved to cast only LGBTQ+ people, he worked really hard to find a variety of people at a variety of experience levels to create a really cool cast and ensemble and moments so that, again, you didn't have to be in that experience of being the only one on set, which is normal for queer people. Yes, ours is a really, really diverse and diffuse and rich community. I think that people are sometimes really likely to point out these separations and point out these differences because it is fun to watch marginalized people fight with each other.

One of the things that this movie really does is poke fun at and celebrate the conversations within our diverse community, and look at the way that Billy's white cis character, who has spent his whole life learning to be loud so his own voice is not silenced has to learn to quiet down and listen so that he isn't silencing the voices around him. The queer community is a family, we are diverse, we fight, we sometimes forget each other, we sometimes disappoint each other, but it doesn't change that you're a family, and that sense was so present the entire time I was there.

For me, one of the most striking moments, Nicholas Stoller, the director, there was one day when we were shooting and he was just like, "I feel so bad, there are all of these people, they're all so talented, and they're all just so happy to be here." Sometimes it's hard that it takes this much for a straight white cis guy to see that, but also, it's good that it happens. It is important that it happens. One of the things I think is coolest about this movie was just introducing this great diversity of queer performers to a whole lot more people in decision-making capacities, who can understand that they can fit into roles that people didn't think about them for before.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I felt that one in my gut, man. I was recently at a conference of all Black women and girls. It was a conference about Black women and girls and there were some brilliant papers being presented, but honestly, I'm not sure I can tell you what the papers were even about in this moment, because mostly, the glow of joy that I left with was, having been in that room, just being like, "Oh my God, this feels so good. Oh, this is just so great. I'm so happy right now." It is a reminder of how infrequently we are in rooms that affirm us simply by existing.

Guy Branum: Yes. I was on the set every day, I'm a co-producer on the movie, and there was one role that I thought had just been handed to an onset extra. She was so funny and I didn't think twice about it, and then in the last couple of weeks, somebody pointed out that she is a veteran trans performer who Billy had found and brought into the movie. As a gay comedian, my entire career has been exposing me to people who were astoundingly talented, who never had the chance to succeed on a bigger level. My career has always had the presence of people who were astoundingly talented and forgotten.

One of the things I think is really beautiful about this movie is it takes place in a gay history museum and it's always reminding us of the people who did not make it to the freedoms of today, the people whose work made today possible. That's not something that's sad, as you're saying, that's something that's really thrilling. That's something that is electrifying just to be around and and realize is possible.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You seem far too young to have written a memoir and yet you did, but talk to me a little bit about Goddess: A Memoir Through Unpopular Culture.

Guy Branum: Melissa, I'm very solidly middle aged, thus it is entirely appropriate. One time I was I was at a show with the comedian Nicole Byer and she was like, "They want me to write a book of essays," and I was like, "Come back to me when I'm 40." I think my book came out when I was 40, which is probably appropriate for a book of essays, but my book is called My Life as a Goddess: I memoir through Unpopular Culture and it's basically just a series of essays where I go through my life in chronological order, but I also talk about the culture that was meaningful to me at that time or culture that helps illustrate what I was going through.

I think when you are somebody who comes from a marginalized group, being able to presume you have common ground with everyone is sometimes difficult. I tried to use popular culture as a third point for triangulation to help people who aren't me understand my experience.

I was watching some of the Eddie Murphy's early, like 1980s, specials, his two big early specials, and I had forgotten how much of the material he did was pop culture material, that at the same time he was talking about his upbringing and his very subjective childhood experiences. So many of the things we think of as core old school Eddie Murphy material, he would then go do five minutes about Star Trek or something just to remind you that you were all living in the same culture and working in the same culture.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Give me your dream project, who would you like to work with? What would, if you could wave that magic wand, if you had that goddess capacity to just create, you are a creator, but what would be the project or some of the folks in a project that you'd love to do?

Guy Branum: One of the things about my book, like the story that it is premised on is the story of Leto from the Metamorphosis, that there was this goddess who was pregnant by Zeus and had been cursed to wonder the earth with nowhere to give her safety and a bunch of people started making fun of her for being an unwed mother. She was hot and thirsty and had no options and she was demolished. Then she walked away and remembered, "Oh wait, I'm a goddess." Then she turned around and she turned all of those people into frogs.

The thing about being a goddess is you forget, and the thing about being a gay male writer and comedian in Los Angeles who's been working for the last 20 years is it's easy to not think about dream projects and it's easy to not think about projects that center you, because for such a long time, people have said to me, "What's your story?" Then I tell them what my story is and they say, "That's not marketable, that's not bankable, would you like to write about a sassy lady in the city?"

I have loved writing about sassy ladies in the city. I've written for some of the best of them, but I do really love questions like yours because they challenge me to think that way, and I do really love projects like Bros or Fire Island where people I know who are also gay men were bold enough to put themselves at the center of the story.

That said, what is my dream project right now? I had a half-hour sitcom that was about me based on my life that was developed in NBC. It didn't move forward. That was a dream project that didn't go. Right now I have a script for an adaptation of the 1987 film Babette's Feast that I have been working with the original producers on. We are trying to find a director for that. Alexander Payne was previously attached, but he left. That's not a story about me, that's a story that is very distant from me, but it is something that is still a dream. There's a chapter about it in my book. Melissa, would you like to know how I got this job, writing the adaptation of Babette's Feast?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes.

Guy Branum: I wrote a chapter in my book about what Babette's Feast means to me and then I did a podcast about things that make you cry and a producer heard it. She was working with the original producers of Babette's Feast to try to figure out somebody to adapt it into an English language film. She reached out to me because she knew I love it. In all of the ways that the universe tells you that things aren't possible, like NBC passing [unintelligible 00:19:09] sitcom, there are also these wonderful ways that the universe reaches out and gives you things that you hoped for that you never imagined were possible. That's really lovely to me.

I will continue to challenge myself to think that very fat, gay, bold to cerebral people can be at the center of stories, but also to have the humility and curiosity to try to think about and tell stories that aren't about me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You got me with that one because I-- Oh, yes, we should tell our own stories, but also, all the other stories too, and in fact, having room for all those stories in our heads and our hearts. You're right, the universe, she is just a sassy lady in the city with giving us the good and the bad and all of it. Guy Branum is co-star and co-producer of Bros. Thanks so much for joining us.

Guy Branum: Thanks so much for having, Melissa. I really appreciate it.

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