Rebel Wilson Insisted 'Isn't It Romantic' Gay BFF Role Go to Gay Actor

Rebel Wilson’s new movie features her playing a character that gets knocked out and wakes up in the middle of a romantic comedy — her worst fear.

The film, Isn’t It Romantic, highlights all the tropes used throughout our fave rom-coms of the past, including giving Wilson’s character Natalie an overly flamboyant, stereotypical white gay BFF.

But unlike most stereotypical gay BFFs in 90s/00s rom-coms, this character is actually played by an openly gay man.

Brandon Scott Jones (who recently started appearing on The Good Place as Tahani’s gossip blogger nemesis-maybe-now-pal) took on the role of Donny, described in the trailer as Natalie’s “gay sidekick, who’s setting gay rights back, like, a hundred years.”

It’s all part of the satire, though, and Wilson told the Los Angeles Times that the movie “make[s] a really clever comment about how gay characters have been marginalized in the past few decades.

“It’s come a long way now, like the work of Ryan Murphy, presenting such complex characters, but only 10 or 20 years ago that wasn’t represented.”

Jones seemed to agree. “It’s very cool that we’re getting a chance to see stories about queer people,” but, he said, “sometimes they’re played by queer people and sometimes they’re not.”

Casting an out actor for Donny was a priority for Wilson, who also has a producer credit on the film.

“It was really important to me that obviously we cast an openly gay actor for the role of Donny so that the character could not in any way be construed as mocking a gay guy,” she said.

Check out the trailer below, and check out the movie in select cities this week or on Netflix on February 28th.