Interview: Justin Timberlake Goes Off Script at "Friends With Benefits" Junket

Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits

Perhaps no stock character in the world of the Hollywood romantic comedy is more lamentable than the "gay best friend" – flamboyant, asexual man, obsessed with fashion, and always ready with a cutting bon mot or a designer-clad shoulder to cry on. It's a stereotype that is ubiquitous even today, in an industry that regularly trumpets its socially progressive virtues but often does little to reflect them on screen.

And yet the upcoming comedy Friends With Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as two ridiculously attractive New York chums who make a pact to engage in a casual sexual relationship sans emotional attachment, is a film that defies those unfortunate conventions by presenting us with a gay character who is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a mainstream release.

Having screened the film over the weekend, what struck me was not necessarily the true-to-life realism of Tommy, the gay character – a macho gay sportswriter played memorably by Woody Harrelson – but rather the way in which he was seemingly constructed to represent the exact opposite of every apple martini-swilling gay "bestie" we've been exposed to in film over the last several decades.

Outside of the obvious pleasure he derives from ogling hot male models in jockstraps at photo shoots (yes, that's actually a scene in the film), on balance Tommy is presented as a radically non-stereotypical, straight-shooting "man's-man" who enjoys playing pick-up basketball games on weekends and talking trash with his heterosexual friends.

It was unfortunate, then, that Harrelson was absent from the film's press junket this weekend – being held at Santa Monica's swanky Casa Del Mar Hotel – though I nevertheless made a point of asking about the creation of his unconventional character with those who were able to attend – namely Timberlake, Kunis, writer/director Will Gluck (who made last year's charming Emma Stone vehicle Easy A which also included a gay character) and screenwriters Keith Merryman and David A. Newman, all of whom participated in a series of morning roundtable sessions in anticipation of the film's July 22nd release.

"That character was not originally in the script," said the scruffily handsome Timberlake. "And I'm really glad you brought it up, because it's something that was very important to [director] Will [Gluck] and myself. And Mila. … When we had the Woody character, we wanted to use that opportunity to break ridiculous stereotypes about sexual preference."

Woody Harrelson as Tommy

"And about the relationship between a straight man and a gay man," added Kunis, gorgeous with her smooth olive skin and those big, almond-shaped eyes (though she seemed curiously deferential to her talkative co-star throughout the conversation, given that he spoke close to 80 percent of the time).

"You know, Will and I had a lot of discussions about it, because I have a lot of guy friends that are straight and gay," continued Timberlake. "And you know, I get along with them the same way, and I wanted that to come from an honest place from my own friendships with men who have a different sexual preference than I do. We both saw it as a great opportunity to sort of, like you said, break a stereotype of what people have – [which] to me, has kind of become insulting – about what a gay man might be.

"So we wanted to show a relationship between a straight guy and a gay guy [who] were just friends…[who] happened to have different sexual preferences. And that they could both be self-effacing to each other about it. Because at the end of the day, that's what friends do. That's what true friends do. They… you know, it's like that thing when sometimes you say, 'I only pick on the people that I like.' And I love Woody's character and my character's relationship in the movie because we have equal banter as two males that happen to have different sexual preferences and I just… it was really important to me that that break the stereotypes."

This refreshing sentiment clearly extended to the rest of the film as well, in that it's a lightly subversive take on the romantic comedy that frequently comments on (and occasionally indulges in) the standard tropes of the genre.

"You know, one of my favorite movies in this genre is When Harry Met Sally," said Timberlake. "And I think that we were just trying to … in the same way that those two people were commenting on what was part of their generation and how their generation dealt with love and sex, that's what we wanted to do with this movie, was have a very honest banter between a man and a woman coming into their own as adults, and what was cliché about love and sex and relationships for this generation."

And yet it turns out that the original script – as penned by Merryman and Newman – didn't possess quite so post-modern a sensibility. For example, while there was always a gay man working at the magazine where Timberlake lands a job early in the film (with the help of Kunis' aggressive executive recruiter), he was originally both less integral to the plot and – and I'm admittedly reading between the lines here – perhaps presented in a more conventional "Hollywood-ized" fashion (Newman claimed this incarnation of the character was based on an employee at Screen Gems, the Sony division that's releasing the film).

"We had a gay guy who worked at the magazine who was a small character," said Merryman. "And then [he] evolved into [what he became], and we ran with it."

But that evolution – not to mention the rest of what ended up on screen– seems to have been the brainchild of Gluck (who also took a screenwriting credit on the film), Timberlake, and Kunis, the latter two of whom agreed to sign on to the project only after Gluck gave them his word that he would be rewriting the script – seemingly without the help of Merryman and Newman – and that they would be given free-ranging creative license to help shape it.

"So here's the thing," said Gluck, shockingly youthful and taking the prize for fastest talker of the day. "We got the script. We liked the idea, we liked the structure of it, [we liked] some of the characters. I got Justin and Mila attached, with the caveat that we would redo everything together… So they came to my house and my office, and we'd write 20 pages at a time – [or rather] I'd write 20 pages at a time – [then] they'd come in and they'd read it out loud and we'd try it again… so by the time we finished this, everything was in their voices."

Indeed, it doesn't appear that either Timberlake or Kunis would've taken part in the project without being given that kind of input, as evidenced when the latter spoke candidly about her reaction to reading Newman and Merryman's original script: "The draft that I read was, um, dated, and PG-13," she confessed. "I was like, 'I don't really understand the purpose of this film.' It was neither here [nor] there. And then they were like, 'Why don't you just meet with them? They're gonna do rewrites, and just talk to them and see what happens.' And so I went and met with Will on the Sony lot. And then later that night we had dinner – Will, Justin, and myself. And we kinda talked about what the plan for the script was.

"I didn't know that they were gonna have this idea of rewriting it from the ground up, and workshopping it, and making it R-rated, and making it more of a comedy and less romantic," she continued. "The reason I wanted to do this was I was given the opportunity to have a voice, and to kind of do what I think is funny, and the way that I view comedies, and the way that I would want a romantic comedy, per se, to be. So I was excited to be part of that process, and that's pretty much when I signed on."