Gay Rom-Com The Thing About Harry Makes Room For Joy

In the universe of romantic comedies, a happily ever right after is all however ensured. That’s why we love them: They’re predictable and comfortable, marked by time-honored tropes that predate the renaissance of When Harry Met Sally… and Pretty Woman. And while, in recent years, the genre has expanded to include diverse characters and more relatable storylines with films like Plus One and Crazy Prosperous Asians, the rom-com remains a stronghold of heteronormativity. LGBTQ+ characters are relegated because the token best friend, while the queer experience inside the mainstream canon has largely been defined by trauma, as in Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don’t Cry, or coming out. Even Greg Berlanti’s wildly successful teen comedy Love, Simon doesn’t stray far from this established framework.


That’s what sets apart the holiday flick The Thing About Harry: there really is no shame present in the film, no triumphant coming out narrative. Rather, its characters are correctly comfortable in their identities from the outset, and queerness, rather than being othered or marred by stigma, is aligned with the universal desire for love. According to co-writer, director, and star Peter Paige, best known for his role on Queer as Folk, it boils down to three flawlessly ordinary needs: “See me. Validate me. Love me.”


The movie kicks off with Sam (Grey’s Anatomy’s Jake Borelli), a type-A gay guy who’s really interested in his political career soon after graduating from college, and whose main relationship is with his best friend Stasia (GLOW’s Britt Baron). Pressured into a road trip to his small hometown with his high school enemy, Harry (Niko Terho), to attend the engagement party of two mutual companions, Sam discovers along the ride that Harry is no longer the jock bully he remembers. Harry, who reveals he fancied Sam for his openness about his own identity, has since come into his own as a pansexual man. (In terms of pan representation on-screen, there really is little behind David, played by Dan Levy, on Schitt’s Creek.) A monthslong game of cat-and-mouse ensues, spanning countless heart-to-hearts with Sam’s older roommate Casey (Paige) and also a cameo from Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown because the bossy art world pro Paul, up until Harry and Sam fatefully reunite in a decorative Valentine’s Day setup.


With the backing of Freeform, and its parent business Disney, this visibility is brought to a whole new audience. However the film also serves as unique milestones for each of its stars. The Thing About Harry marks newcomer Niko Terho’s first on-camera role. And as soon as filming started, it was almost exactly each year to the day that Jake Borelli came out publicly, once his character on Grey’s Anatomy would grapple with the same struggle on primetime. For industry veteran Paige, who started working on Queer as Folk two decades ago — a time whenever being openly gay was thought career suicide — it is a reclamation of a treasured genre. MTV News speaks with the stars, who explain the significance of the rom-com as a space for LGBTQ+ storytelling.


MTV News: The Thing About Harry released the day right after Valentine’s Day. What are your most special, or maybe most embarrassing, Valentine’s Day memories?


Peter Paige: I reside in a romantic fantasy, nevertheless my real Valentine's Days have been nothing however disasters. Yet there was one where I was dating a straight guy, and it also involved a lot of whipped cream.


Jake Borelli: remember, As soon as I was in sixth grade, I had a crush on this girl. I felt like I had to woo her, so I snuck out of my residence, got on my bike, rode to the Hallmark store, and paid for her this white plush stuffed bear. I was going to give it to her the next day at school, although then I completely chickened out. I hid it in my basement. Valentine's Day came a week later, and my mom had noticed the bear in the basement and put it in her bedroom on her nightstand. I think she thought it was just for decoration. It was super awkward.


Niko Terho: Every Valentine's Day, I've just began seeing somebody. So it's routinely weird. It feels very official, like we’re getting to a certain stage also quickly.


Paige: So what you're telling us is you never make it past per year with anybody?


Terho: I guess I sort of did mention that.


MTV News: What are your preference rom-coms? 


Borelli: 27 Dresses. The “Benny and the Jets” scene was my main go to as a kid, however I didn't know why. In hindsight, it was because I was in love with James Marsden. Where's my James Marsden?


Terho: 10 Things I Hate About You was my all-time preference As soon as I was younger. However I recently watched Notting Hill. Julia Roberts, she's the queen.


Paige: I am a rom-com junkie, so I have seen them all a billion times. It was super crucial to me to honor the tropes of the rom-com and to pay homage to all of these rom-coms that I grew up loving although, at the same time, make it queer-specific. That allowed for excellent twists, and then some things that I think made it feel really fresh. However probably my main go to rom-com of all time is While You Were Sleeping, which is another Chicago rom-com, with Sandra Bullock running around with her hands in her sleeves. If that token-taker on the L train without hands can find love, then so can I.


MTV News: What are a few of the themes you explore in this movie?


Paige: We think we know people, although we really don't. We're editorializing all of the time, and it's worth taking a step back and reexamining what we believe to be true. Each person is pretty in the event you get close enough, and that’s what this movie solidifies for me, the fundamental idea that we all deserve love. And we all deserve to have our love celebrated in these big, cinematic ways.


MTV News: One of the motifs I found during was this idea of the friend zone. 


Paige: “The Friend Zone” was from the working titles of the movie, for the record.


MTV News: Do you believe in the friend zone? Can companions fall in love, or is that habitually a bad idea? 


Terho: It's certainly possible, yet I feel like the friend zone doesn't occur as frequently as we believe it does.


Borelli: I think you could go through times of being in the friend zone and then times of being more or far less than that. Everything can evolve.


Paige: I'm a hardcore believer that it's a bad idea. For gay males, especially, whenever you settle into the friend zone, it's really unlikely you’ll claw your way back out.


MTV News: As soon as did you first feel represented on-screen?


Borelli: I used to watch Degrassi a lot, and I would stay up late to catch it because it had teenagers in situations I didn't visualize any time watching primetime TV. That mentioned, it was on around 3 a.M., And my parents were asleep, so it felt like I was doing something wrong. Although I felt represented in a way, and I was seeing queer teenagers on-screen for the initial time, I was also reminded that maybe this isn't OK still. It was a long time up until I felt represented in a healthy way. Reading The Thing About Harry was big for me in feeling like I was truly reflected back, and my role on Grey's Anatomy was an enormous turning point for me as an artist. Before that, it was a lot of translating, taking straight relationships and translating them into my own language.


Paige: I'm so glad you referred to yourself, Jake, because my response is Queer as Folk, the show I was on. Because If I grew up, it was Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, just because Paul Lynde was such a flamer. Then there were like these little glimmers of RuPaul, once “Supermodel” came out, in the early '90s. I remember I used to call my companions as soon as Ricki Lake had gay people on her talk show, and so they were these hopped-up club kids. That was it. That was the representation we got. So I feel like my career began with this watershed moment any time queer people claimed some space in narrative television.


Borelli: That's the thing. Just because there's a queer character, that doesn't mean I'm going to relate to them, just because I'm gay.


Paige: 100 percent. And by the way, I get that Queer as Folk was not that for a lot of people. In case you were not a white cis male, then that wasn't your jam. I understand why people were frustrated by that. I absolutely do. Nevertheless for me, it was the initial time that I recognized myself in stories.


Borelli: That's why it's so critical that there really are more queer people out in media right now, because it just gives you so several different ideas of who you could be as a queer person. In this movie, specifically, we have so several queer characters that, in the event you don't relate to Sam, you may relate to Harry, or you may relate to Casey.


Paige: you may be a bitch like Paul.


MTV News: The idea that each person deserves love is something that all people, LGBTQ+ or otherwise, can indicate with. Although how do you balance that universal truth with creating something that feels distinctly queer?


Paige: Being queer has meant translating forever. We've been putting ourselves into Julia Roberts's heels, so I habitually knew that that people can translate. That was one of the wonderful takeaways from Queer as Folk. The audience was around 80 percent straight females, who could project romantic fantasies into all these males. You tell human stories about humans and humans will relate, full stop. It is irrelevant how they're dressed, how they identify. It's love and longing. That's the core of everything for everyone.


Borelli: Love isn't gendered, and I fully believe that. Something that Niko and I were able to tap into was just love. The fact that we're both guys is wonderful, nevertheless what we were acting was just this pure love, which I think is universal and people can relate to.


Terho: Fully. I attempted to come to the character like, this is Harry, and he's unique. You can't generalize anything. Yeah, he is pansexual, nevertheless that just happens to be who he is and that doesn't really change how he acts.


MTV News: What about your characters do you identify with? 


Borelli: There's a lot of me in Sam. I'm very type A, however I'd like to think he is a little more type A than I am. Maybe I have a little more fun. I'm a little more of a pessimist-realist than Sam is. I think Sam has a little more hope for what he can do, whereas I think I'm still learning that about myself.


Terho: I feel like we are all basically characters. There's a scene where Harry’s in the reflect [primping] and that's exactly what I do.


Paige: I didn't direct that. We put a camera on it, and Niko just got himself ready in that washroom scene. That wink in the resemble was 100 percent Niko Terho, and I will love it my whole life. And, by the way, this was Niko's first job on-camera.


MTV News: What are your hopes for the future of the rom-com genre? 


Paige: I can't wait to be able to see an excellent trans rom-com. We're long overdue for a wonderful lesbian rom-com. A rom-com is just such a wonderful way to spend a hour and also 1/2. Especially in this world we're living in now, where it's really dark, and every time you go on social media there's complicated news. So have the ability to retreat for just 90 minutes and feel safe and know that a happy ending is probably coming, I just think it's a really worthwhile task to undertake of cinema. So I'd love to be able to see more voices represented in this space.


Terho: Love is such a universal thing, and everybody needs to feel themselves represented on-screen. So moving forward, the genre being a more accurate resemble of life could be great.


Borelli: The fact that we can make a movie about queer people that isn't about coming out, and there really isn't a lot of shame in this movie, I think is excellent. We can just be in this genre that is light and around love and makes you feel good. If we can give that to several other groups of people, that could be wonderful.