For many years, Luke Macfarlane was one of only a handful of gay actors who never shied away from playing queer roles. His coming out during a newspaper interview in 2008 coincided with him playing Matthew Rhys\u2019 husband on the ABC family drama \u201cBrothers & Sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in his latest work, Apple TV+\u2019s \u201cPlatonic,\u201d Macfarlane plays a straight character, Rose Byrne\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cQuite simply, like most actors, gay actors, straight actors, we just need someone to say, \u2018I\u2019m gonna give you a shot,\u2019\u201d Macfarlane told me at the \u201cPlatonic\u201d premiere in Los Angeles. \u201cThe fact is somebody said, \u2018That guy who just did this movie \u201cBros,\u201d <\/a>where he gets into a lot of very gay stuff, can play a straight guy,\u2019 and that\u2019s truly because somebody said somebody in power said, \u2018I\u2019m going to give you a shot.\u2019 I\u2019m so grateful to Nick for that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Nick is Nicholas Stoller<\/a>, the director of \u201cBros\u201d and co-creator of \u201cPlatonic.\u201d Currently in its second season, \u201cPlatonic\u201d follows the lives \u2014 the ups, the downs, and the very hysterical \u2014 of best friends Will (Seth Rogen<\/a>) and Sylvia (Byrne).<\/p>\n I joked with Macfarlane about the possibility of not playing gay again. \u201cI love playing gay,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll play gay. I\u2019ll play straight. I\u2019ll do anything. I am very versatile.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Macfarlane is not only a regular in Hallmark Channel movies with both gay and straight roles, but he\u2019s developing an LGBTQ Christmas movie for the network. \u201cHallmark is definitely telling queer stories, so I\u2019ve been trying to find a queer story that would make sense for them\u2026It\u2019s very long development,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Macfarlane says queer Hallmark movies offer a break from the very real-world political attacks on the LGBTQ community. \u201cI think what\u2019s interesting with Hallmark is their brand is so intact and part of their brand has never been to be overtly political, at least all the time that I\u2019ve worked there,\u201d he said. \u201cFor them, it\u2019s just continuing to tell stories that really resonate with people that can still be an escape from the difficulties of our current situation.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cWe all have a queer friend, we all have a queer neighbor, we all have a queer brother or sister\u2026.It\u2019s actually just part of life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPlatonic\u201d Season 2, episode 4 premieres on Apple TV+ on Aug. 20.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For many years, Luke Macfarlane was one of only a handful of gay actors who never shied away from playing queer roles. His coming out during a newspaper interview in 2008 coincided with him playing Matthew Rhys\u2019 husband on the ABC family drama \u201cBrothers & Sisters.\u201d But in his latest work, Apple TV+\u2019s \u201cPlatonic,\u201d Macfarlane […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1965524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[347631,347632,345012,347630,318163],"class_list":["post-1965523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-brothers-sisters","tag-gay-actors","tag-luke-macfarlane","tag-nicholas-stoller","tag-rose-byrne"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Luke-Macfarlane-on-Developing-a-Queer-Hallmark-Christmas-Movie-and.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1965523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1965524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1965523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1965523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1965523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n