Platonic’s Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen on whether men and women can be just friends

LOS ANGELES – The romantic-comedy film When Harry Met Sally (1989) famously asked whether men and women can ever be truly platonic friends.

Platonic, a series debuting on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, answers in the affirmative – but it also shows that such friendships are rare enough that they continue to fascinate.

The 10-episode comedy stars Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen as Sylvia and Will, who were besties in college but fell out and stopped speaking for two decades.

Now in their 40s, they are finally reconnecting. But the friendship becomes all-consuming and hilariously disruptive, although it might be just what they need as they enter a new phase of their lives.

Chatting to The Straits Times over Zoom, the actors – who played husband and wife in the hit Neighbours comedy films (2014 and 2016) – say they have many platonic friends of the opposite sex.

“I firmly believe you can have good platonic friendships,” says Byrne, the 43-year-old Australian actress who starred in the comedy film Bridesmaids (2011).

“We both have a lot of platonic friendships with people who are not our gender,” says Rogen, the 41-year-old Canadian-American star of romantic comedy Knocked Up (2007).

“I’ve never found a problem with it. But I think a lot of people project their own feelings about relationships and gender roles onto things.”

The actors say their own friend groups are evenly split, gender-wise.

“I’m friends with a lot of couples, so that evens out the playing field,” says Rogen, who is married to American actress and comedienne Lauren Miller, 41.

But he adds that it is up for debate whether a good friendship must involve the brutal honesty that Sylvia and Will practise with each other on the show.

“I think it’s ultimately about deciding whether you want to be friends with the person or not,” says Rogen. He wrote and directed the apocalyptic comedy This Is The End (2013) and received an Emmy nomination for his role in biographical drama Pam & Tommy (2022).

“Honesty can be good with some people and terrible with other people. I have some friends I’m very honest with and some friends where I’m like, ‘I can never be honest with that person.’”

In the end, it comes down to whether one wants certain friends in his or her life, says Byrne, who was Emmy-nominated for her role in the legal drama Damages (2007 to 2012).

“And whether or not they’ll have you,” Rogen observes. “As I get older, I see that there are no boxes that all my friends tick. It’s more like: My life is better because we have each other.

“And there’s a point with some people where you go: I think our lives would be better if we didn’t.”

Like their characters, Rogen and Byrne have seen friendships come and go.

“It’s definitely generational, to an extent. I feel like these things tend to happen as you get older and you have families and so on,” says Byrne, who is in a relationship with American actor Bobby Cannavale, 53. Their two sons are aged six and five.

And the new series works because of the two actors’ friendship. The story “lives and dies on the chemistry of the two characters”, Byrne says.

It is also rare to see a male-female comedy that is not a romantic one, says the actress, who appeared in the 2011 and 2016 X-Men superhero films.

She and Rogen realised they clicked when they made the first Neighbours movie, in which they played a couple who clash with a rowdy fraternity next door.

“We inherently have good chemistry, which is kind of hard to define, but you recognise it if you have it,” Rogen says.

“Aside from that, we get along very well. We’re of a similar age and we are both from Commonwealth countries, and those are all things that make you have a lot in common in many ways,” he jokes.

“And, for one reason or another, we were able to be funny on camera together.”