Billy Eichner On: White-Knuckling Through Life, Hollywood Bulls**t, and the Two Pieces of Advice That Changed Everything

25:44I guess that's learning about you so that it can hook you. And yeah, I get a lot of Billy on the street, which makes me smile. I get photos of very buff, hairy Ben and mixed in with interviews with Madonna from 1992. So you're looking for a bear. Good for you, Dan. Yeah, I got a lot of gay friends. Wow, okay. Yeah, a certain kind of bear. Yeah, a bear, an otter. Oh, I didn't know what's an otter. Excuse me, how dare you. Dan, no, but I'm proud of you for no... Bears are like another division of otters. Okay, now when I was growing up, all we knew about were bears, which were kind of big, hairy guys.

26:23Sometimes they were hairy, sometimes they were just kind of big. Now, of course, in our new world, there are divisions of bears. So you can have an otter. An otter is like a younger bear, maybe more lean than a bear. Kind of like a hairy, lean, athletic guy. So like a twink version of a bear. That's right. Good for you. How am I doing? Am I doing all right? Yes. Yeah, a twink bear. Yeah. Like a twunk bear or something like that. Let's get back to Billy. And you've referenced this a couple of times. In terms of Billy on the street, the bit is this guy who cares so much about pop culture. The stakes are incredibly high, disproportionately high.

27:03But that actually is just a cartoonish or caricature version of you, as I understand it from preparing to this. Yeah, I think it's a heightened version of who I was as a kid. And to me, Billy on the Street really is kind of like a man-child character. You know, one of my biggest influences was Pee-wee Herman, who if you grew up in the 80s like I did, I was obsessed with Pee-wee Herman. And if you really think about it, and I talk about the parallels in the book, there are a lot of parallels between the Pee-wee character and the Billy on the Street character. They're basically grown-up children being embodied by loud, brash gay men.

27:42Billy on the Street started out as a way for me to satirize my own extreme, over-extreme interest in the entertainment industry. And so I thought, well, what if I play the most intense version of a guy who is living and breathing pop culture and his opinions about it and theater and all of it to the point where I force normal people in New York going about their day to stop and talk to me about whatever it is, you know, Kate Winslet's career choices or the Oscars or Meryl Streep, sorry, Meryl Streep or whoever it might be, you know, a pop singer, Madonna, whatever it is. In the book, you talk about the fact that your parents really kind of were and you referenced this earlier in this conversation that your parents like aided and abetted this interest.

28:31Oh, yeah. And so much of the book, for me, the book is mainly a love letter to my parents, Jay and Debbie Eichner, who, this was the 80s and 90s. They knew, I'm pretty sure, that they had a gay kid. Even before I came out, it was pretty obvious. And remember, I grew up in New York City, as did they. My mom grew up in Brooklyn. My dad grew up in the Bronx. I grew up in Queens. I went to high school in Manhattan. They had both lived when they were single before I came along in the West Village in the 60s and 70s, which is like the mecca for gay men at that time. And so the idea of having a gay child, probably not what they expected, but they were very quick to embrace me.

29:13And not only the gay thing, what they were really quick to embrace also is this real passion I had for the performing arts. I was a really good singer as a kid in kind of the old school Broadway way, and I would belt out show tunes in our very small apartment in Queens and everyone in the building would hear me. And sometimes they would complain that I was singing too loudly the neighbors. And my parents would kind of roll their eyes and be like, okay, well, we'll tell them to quiet down. And then they wouldn't, you know, and they would applaud. I would sing in the apartment on a Saturday morning and I would belt along to pop songs at the time or Barbra Streisand's Broadway album, which was like my introduction to show tunes.

29:55And I would be belting out at the top of my lungs. And I was like a five-year-old kid, so I could sing like a woman. I could still sing really high notes. And my father, who spent most of his time loving the Mets and the Yankees and football and was kind of a more conventional, like, you know, straight guy from the Bronx, he loved when I sang. I'm going to cry. He loved when I sang and he, they would applaud. in the living room. And they always completely leaned in and let me be me. And whether someone likes my work or not, I would say my success, and I've had a fair amount of success, especially for an unconventional kind of person in a very cutthroat industry in Hollywood, all of my success can be traced back to the fact that my parents, Jay and Debbie Eichner, their default mode was always to just love the hell out of their kid.

30:54And if anyone takes anything away from the book, I hope it's that. Taking nothing away from mothers, because mothers are amazing. There is something in my experience special about a father's love. A father's love. And in 1985, 1988, 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York, by the way, which as a child, I wasn't as cognizant of as my parents probably were. But my mother's boss in high school was a gay man. My parents were adults. They knew about all of that. Even then, my father loved his gay son and all of my very gay interests. And I begged them to see Madonna in concert, and they took me.

31:37And I begged them almost to the point of tears to get tickets to see Barbra Streisand, and they took me. And they weren't rich, but they used what they had. I wasn't only child, so I benefited from that. And they would take me into the city and we went to see plays about gay men. And I would sit in between them and they would not act like this was weird at all. We didn't necessarily sit around and have like a conversation after. It's like, okay, Billy, those were gay people. Do you know what that is? No, they just treated me like an adult. and that had an enormous impact on my life, on my confidence, on my work.

32:18And I ended up walking into the world with a lot less shame about being gay than I think a lot of gay men do, unfortunately. I'm not saying I never had my moments of shame, or we all do, but relative to a lot of people I know and a lot of people I've read about, other gay men, I was just beyond lucky that they loved me so much. It's a remarkable thing. It's beautiful. It really is. And honestly, we're all benefiting from it because I wouldn't have you in my feed making me smile all the time if you didn't have the confidence to do what you did with that first big break of yours. That's a very nice way of putting it.

33:04Thank you. And that's why the book is so much about my parents. And the book was such a gift to me. And it forced me to sit down, which I probably wouldn't have done, you know, unless I had a reason to, which was that someone made me an offer and I took it to write a book about my childhood. They didn't say that it had to be about my childhood. All the publisher said was we want it to be personal. We want it to be nonfiction, to have a memoir-like quality. They said, other than that, it can be a book of essays. It can be whatever you want. And I sat down and I said, what is this going to be about?

33:42And I thought, okay, what is the root of all of this? Why was I able to accomplish all of this? Being gay, not ever being the prettiest person to walk into the audition room. I'm a fine-looking person, but by Hollywood standards, what gave me the chutzpah, as my parents would have said and my grandparents would have said, what gave me that confidence to kind of blaze through? And I had to sit down and think, well, what was it? And I started thinking about my childhood. I started thinking about all the ways my parents always supported my interest and passion to the best of their ability. Again, even though they weren't wealthy people, when I got into Northwestern, which has a renowned theater program, but is also a very expensive school.

34:34And the assumption was because we were in New York that I would always go to NYU, which is not a cheap school, but at least would mean I was staying local. And I got into Northwestern and my dad took me to visit Northwestern. and we sat in on an acting class. It was just the two of us. And I turned to him after and I said, I love that acting class so much. That is exactly where I want to be and who I want to be. And he said, okay, we'll make it happen. He said to me, if you want to go there, we'll do what we have to do. And it was financial aid and it was loans and it was student loans for me.

35:14I didn't pay back my Northwestern loans until I got Billy on the street on TV when I was 32. years old. But it was always that was their mentality. And it wasn't a mentality. I think I say in the book, so many other parents would have said, this is a lovely hobby for you. Go get a real job. We don't have the money to like back you up here. But they just didn't feel that way. They always felt like we are going to do whatever it takes to give you a shot. and I talk about this in the book, how my dad, I think he had a little bit of a hangup. My dad was someone who didn't have a lot of money but would watch CNBC around the clock as if he did and track the stock market.

35:56You know, he was a numbers guy. He was an accountant. And I think he maybe had a little bit of a hangup over the fact that he hadn't become a very wealthy man. And he saw that if you have wealth and you have connections, that that really helps your kid make it in Hollywood. And he was determined determined that just because he didn't have that and we weren't a show business family he was determined that i would get a shot anyway and did everything he could to make that happen and the whole book is a tribute to that let me ask you about your mother um you write and i find this um very amusing in the book uh you say that tragically for a memoir writer you possess And this is the quote, audio book only levels of childhood trauma.

36:43That being said, there are there is in particular one really searing memory where you witnessed the aftermath of a fight they had. Can you talk about that? I think you saw your mother in the kitchen after a fight. Yes. My mom was an incredibly wonderful, sunny person who loved everyone and loved everything. My mom told everyone she loved them within seconds of meeting them. And it wasn't a facade. It wasn't an affectation. this is who she was. She was an incredibly optimistic person. She would tell my dry cleaner she loved him. Whenever we would leave the dry cleaner, she would say, love you. Love you, everyone.

37:19It became like a catchphrase in her world. You know, love you, love you, love you. She would say that to everyone. At the same time, people are complicated. And she had this on again, off again addiction to prescription diet pills when I was a kid, which were basically speed in the 80s and 90s. And she also had an underlying heart condition, which leads to her having a heart attack when I was in college, which I talk about in the book. But before that, taking those pills would make her very emotional and a bit more overreactive than she usually was. So it would cause a lot of fights between her and my dad.

37:58And when she wasn't on the pills, they would never fight. And when she was on the pills, she was fighting with everyone. However, if I'm being honest, the pills also allowed her, I think, to express some of the pain she had in a way she couldn't when she was sober, if that makes sense. And so once, yeah, I witnessed her and my dad having this fight. I don't remember what the fight was about, but my dad, as you'll hear in the book, is a very loving man, but stoic. My dad was in the Korean War. He was older than my mom. It's a different generation of straight man. And he wasn't as great overtly with the emotional stuff.

38:45My mom would always get annoyed with him because he wouldn't show me much physical affection. I didn't care because I could always tell it was so obvious my dad loved me. but she wanted to see my mom being like a Jewish mother had like so my God she was constantly hugging me and kissing and everyone you know she was like this uh just it was a flood of affection constantly you know I say in the book my mom's love was like the sphere in Vegas it was an immersive theatrical experience it was all over me and under me you know at all times and that was wonderful. My dad was the opposite. He wasn't as physically demonstrative and that would piss her off sometimes.

39:28So they had this fight and I witnessed my mom. I must have been 10 or 11 or something like that. And she's standing over the sink by herself when they'd had this fight, but he'd stopped responding to her. And she was saying she was like kind of crying to herself. And from my bedroom, I used to like sit and watch my TV constantly, but there was a door open. I I could see her in the kitchen. It was a very small apartment. We lived on top of each other. We heard everything, saw everything. She was crying to herself. She was saying, crying out to my dad, like, can't you see I'm lonely? I'm sad. And he did not respond.

40:08And I witnessed that as a kid. And part of me was mad because I didn't like when she was on the pills. It would change her personality. but even then as a kid maybe gay kids are just smarter or maybe because they let me watch so much like adult theater and movies i kind of had an insight into adulthood i don't know if maybe maybe all kids do i don't know i was never another kid but um i i could see her it was almost like i was watching her as one of these characters in one of these more adult movies i'd watched like a Woody Allen movie or something a bit more sophisticated where you were dealing with midlife people in pain or something.

40:54And I could tell that the emotions she was expressing were honest. And I had never heard her say that before. And that stuck with me. Maybe it's only audiobook level of trauma, but it is traumatic. I think it can be traumatic for kids to see their parents let their guard down in that way. I felt bad for her. I didn't feel bad for myself. I was always so loved and protected. Even when she was on pills, it's like none of the antagonisms she would direct on others when she was in that mode was ever directed at me. I guess even in that state, I was still like the center of her universe, you know, like I was always so loved and protected.

41:40but I loving my mother and we were so, you know, a gay son and his mother, they're going to be very close. And most of the times things were phenomenal. I mean, I had this like dreamy childhood, you know, but there were, it was punctuated by moments like that. And I just felt bad for her because I was a kid and I didn't quite know what to do about that. But I knew something needed to happen. She was in more pain than she was willing to admit emotionally, which is why 10 years later, I get to college and I come home and I try to convince her. I'm desperate to convince her to see a therapist. We didn't talk about mental health as much in those days.

42:26And my mother and a lot of people in that time thought only crazy people go to therapy. you know and luckily that's really changed an enormous amount when my mother did die and it was time for my dad to go to therapy because obviously that was devastating for him he went he went immediately and went on prozac and it changed his life he'd never been happier wow yeah but she she didn't want to go i think there were things she wanted she was this bright and sunny person. And that was not, like I said, that was not an act. But I think she was very resistant to openly discussing anything that she didn't feel great about.

43:11Yeah, people are complicated. That vulnerability, she didn't want to admit it out loud. It's hard to admit it out loud. Yeah. If you listen to this show, you're of course interested in doing life better and upgrading your mind, up-leveling many aspects of your life, but as I've said so many times, you really can't do much if you're not sleeping. That's when your muscles rebuild, your hormones reset, and your brain consolidates everything you learned during the day. The science is clear here. Temperature is one of the single biggest levers you can pull to improve your sleep. Too warm, and you stay stuck in a light sleep.

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46:23As you said at the beginning of this conversation and you say in the beginning of your new audiobook, book, the book is not supposed to be helpful. And yet there are two like wisdom bombs that you drop at the end of the book, one from your mom and one from your dad. Let's start with your mom. Maybe you can tell the story of what she said to you at your bar mitzvah when you were freaking out. Yeah. So I talk about my bar mitzvah party a lot in the book. I, being a young culture obsessed gay child, I art directed my bar mitzvah reception as if it was the friggin Met Gala. I mean, I acted like I was Truman Capote planting his black and white ball at the plaza.

47:07And as I say in the book, but even more dangerous because my parents loved me. There's nothing more dangerous than a beloved child. But I was so intense about it. And again, my parents let me lead the way. And I had this creative vision for my bar mitzvah party, and I wanted it to be, the theme was Broadway meets pop, because I couldn't decide which one I liked more. So there was a large life-size portrait of Madonna in her comb bra and garter belt at my bar mitzvah. That was on one side of the DJ booth. And on the other side of the DJ booth was an equally large spray-painted portrait of the Phantom of the Opera, right?

47:49This was an extremely gay affair, especially for Queens in 1991, all right? Queens, New York, all right? We're not in Manhattan here. My parents let me do it. And all the kids' tables were named after pop stars. Mine was Madonna, of course. All the parents' tables were named after Broadway shows. we had dancers we really leaned in and i had this vision that you know people were going to be dancing and i wanted people dancing during certain parts of the party and people sitting during other parts of the party during the show tunes so that it would be more adult and sophisticated and it would take you on like an emotional journey please you know again i thought i was like putting together like a pop concert here right or like a broadway show so i'm looking around and it's kind of towards the beginning, maybe getting into the middle of my bar mitzvah, and I am freaking out because it doesn't look exactly the way I thought it would look in my mind.

48:44And people aren't dancing enough. They're not playing the right songs. I had handed the DJs weeks in advance a handwritten list of like 300 songs. And at the top of the list, I wrote in a pencil with underlined words, these songs must be played. And that list included some obscure show tunes that your typical bar mitzvah DJ would not have had on hand. So they weren't playing the right songs. And my vision wasn't being seen through. And I ran over to my mother and I basically had a breakdown. And I said, after all my months of planning, people aren't dancing. They're not playing the right songs.

49:29No one's having a good time. And I just panic as this young gay kid whose artistic dreams seem to be falling apart in real time. And my mother, who was always so warm and loving, kind of took an unusual for her tone. And she kneeled down in a very loving but pointed way. And she looked at me and said, this party is amazing. Everyone's having a great time. It's just getting started. People are dancing. They're going to be dancing more. She said, please, you have to have a good time. You have to have fun here. Please don't be crazy. You have to have fun. And that really stayed with me. And I think about that too, even now, decades later when I'm getting stressed about work or things aren't going right, I think about my mom saying that to me and it's like, please don't be crazy.

50:26everything's amazing you have to have fun if we don't remember your mother's advice we just trudge through life that's right yeah and i think i've white knuckled it through a lot of things now if my friends heard this they would say what are you talking about you have a lot of fun you have fun all the time and i do i i do have fun but i think part of that is like my mom having given me that advice like at such an early age, you know? And I recently, to pull clips to promote my book, I recently watched my bar mitzvah video, which of course was on VHS because it was 1991. And I had it converted to a digital file, which is so funny.

51:07Now my bar mitzvah video is just in my phone. So after not really watching it for decades, I can now look at it every single day. and I was looking at my bar mitzvah video and I had already written the book and talked about how stressed I was at my bar mitzvah and how much it meant to me that it looked exactly the way I wanted it to look, etc. And then I rewatched the video and I look stressed out. I look so stressed. you know and I'm like this fat sweaty Jewish kid right and I is supposed to be my big day and it's funny because behind the scenes I thought I was such a player you know I thought I was like I think I say in the book I was like you know Luca Guadagino like you know planning the next shot on the set of his new movie I thought I was like such an artist putting this bar mitzvah together and then I get there and I'm just it just doesn't seem like I thought it would seem in my head.

52:06And that's really, you can see the pain on my face, right? Which is why my mother leaned over and said that to me. However, my parents are dancing up a storm. They have never looked happier. They are even more than I remember. And it made me so happy to see them like that. I mean, I haven't watched, you know, growing up when I did, we didn't have iPhone cameras. Like, I don't have a lot of my parents on video like that, you know, and they're dancing. you would have thought they were at Studio 54. They don't stop dancing. And they are hilarious. And they are so funny. And they are having like the time of their lives while their like 13-year-old child is like having a nervous breakdown, you know, because like the Madonna portrait doesn't look right.

52:49Sorry, what was the question? I forget what you said. I was just, I didn't even ask a question. Oh, I just started talking. I just was saying that, and I'll say a longer version now, that I find your mother's advice so impactful to me personally, because I get so wrapped up in my bullshit that I trudge through life. I, as you say, white knuckle through life. And so it's really helpful to be reminded internally through a story or externally by somebody else, you know, this thing's moving fast. Like you should enjoy it as Ferris Bueller, you know? Absolutely. And because my mom died when I was 20 and then my dad dies later in my life, but he dies one month before Billy on the Street becomes a TV show.

53:33So he doesn't see any of my career happened for me, even though he wanted it for me so badly. So because of that, though, I do have a very tangible feeling of life is short just isn't like a theoretical thing in my head. I can feel it. You know, I've seen it with my own eyes. And so I do try to have a good time. And it is a great reminder. And I think a lot of us are white knuckling through things all the time. And we may not even realize it because we've gotten so used to it. And so I have to remind myself now, lighten the fuck up. Seriously, this book, every time I have a project coming out, the promo is the most stressful part of all because it's like you've worked so hard.

54:17I love the work itself. But then God, is anyone going to buy it? Is anyone going to listen to it? Is it going to get lost in the fray of the algorithm? them how is it gonna pop through like i can't compete with friggin zendaya or whatever you know what i mean and i have to remind myself to just lighten up like i'm in entertainment it's fun your fans will find the book it's like just have fun and i don't want to be doing all of this and not enjoying it it's such a waste your dad the other amazing piece of wisdom at the end of the book comes from your dad. I had a grandmother who spoke Yiddish, but I never heard this term.

55:00Gnug? Is that it? Gnug. Gnug. That's how my dad would say it. But sometimes he would say, they would say a lot of Yiddish words, but in their own way. So I don't know the correct pronunciation, but as a kid, my dad would always say gnug, meaning enough. And he would, my dad would say it occasionally. When he would say it the most often is when he would sit at the dinner table and eat. And eat and eat. We were Jews. We liked to eat a lot, a lot of carbs. There was no talk about healthy eating ever or exercise when I was growing up. When they finally opened a gym in my neighborhood in Queens, they opened like a Lucille Roberts.

55:43And my parents and I walked past it on our way to the movies. Of course, we went to the movies together every single Saturday night and on our way to the movie theater and they had windows to the gym so you could look inside. My dad looked at these people exercising as if they were like he's he called them lonely weirdos. They were like freakish aliens to him that they were on treadmills. It was so foreign to him that someone would choose to do that with their time right to exercise. You know, again, this was the 80s now. Now we're all like fitness crazed. But like it was so funny to me. So my dad, he wasn't hugely overweight, but he had the gut, you know, and he would eat and eat and eat.

56:25And then every night, almost every night, he would have like two scoops of ice cream for dessert. But then I would watch him and he would almost like kind of gently throw the utensils down, not in like a violent way, but just like a put them down it with intent, like intently and then muttered to himself, meaning he was telling himself enough. Yeah, that always stuck with me too. You got to tell yourself that sometimes, especially in our age of anxiety and constant algorithm-induced spiraling. Can you use it in your life to combat our innate insatiability? Like you find that for you, your dad's Yiddish utterance will surface in your mind when you're spiraling out of control and wanting something.

57:16Yeah, I mean, I try. It doesn't always help. But yeah, I remember those two things. Actually, my mom saying, have fun. You don't be crazy. You have to have fun. Don't stop being so crazy. So funny to me because it was my bar mitzvah party. Stop being so crazy. People will dance. you know um that's that's stuck with me what really stays with me about my dad is he was this guy from the bronx if you know the actor alan arkin who passed away i think recently he was also from the bronx and around my dad's age like alan arkin and little miss sunshine was very much my dad. And if you're looking for a visual, and my dad had this just instinctive hatred of bullshit, of anything that read to him or felt like bullshit or affectation or artifice, right?

58:18And that really is a part of who I am. And my mother too. We did not like affectation. We loved a great performance on stage. That was our favorite thing. But in real life, if someone seemed overly affected or pretentious or something, we were like New Yorkers who had no time for that. How have you survived in Hollywood? I'm not in Hollywood, but it seems like it's a lot of that. I literally say that in my book. I say that quality I inherited from my dad, that very low threshold for bullshit has not served me well in my industry of choice. And I think I'm really good about my work. Creatively, we all have things that are better, things that are a little less good.

59:10But I think overall, I'm proud of my work. I think it's unique and it's solid and maybe not for everyone. But I think it's good. And I work really hard. And I put my heart on the line every time. That part I'm good at, the work itself, the other stuff, the marketing of yourself and kind of the schmooziness of it all. I can turn it on when I need to. But it's tough for me. Quote unquote, playing the game. I have low patience for that. And I do sometimes wonder, would I be farther along if I had more tolerance for it or if I didn't speak my mind as much? Because that really will trigger people. Yeah, you might like yourself less.

59:59Absolutely, which is why I don't do it. And I never cared about being the most famous person or the richest person. Never. I am so much more famous than I even ever thought I would be. And I'm not that famous. I always think of myself as like the least famous famous person but i don't give a shit i just wanted to do off broadway plays and somehow billy on the street took off and it led to all these really wonderful exciting tv and film opportunities i am telling you a life in the theater for me that would be number one you know and it's strangely the one thing i like haven't done i hope to do it but But so for me, if I've lost opportunities because I've been a little impolitic or whatever, I've spoken out of line or someone thought I was speaking out of line or I was a little too brash for someone.

1:00:52That's just going to have to be OK, because I have to live with myself. I have to say, as we wind down here in my little focus group, everybody I brag to about the fact that you're coming on the show knew who you were. Oh, that's nice. Before I let you go, anything you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to? One thing I'm surprised you didn't ask me because everyone else does is why only an audiobook? What's the answer? The answer is because I really wanted people to hear my voice and to not listen to my story in the Billy on the Street voice. And I thought this would be a nice way of doing that.

1:01:29I also love, love, love, love listening to audiobooks from entertainers that I love. It's a rare opportunity to like hear them and it feels like they're talking to you, you know, and I love that. So I wanted to give people that experience. You don't have to include that if you don't want to. I want to. Just final, final thing. Just remind everybody of the name of the book and where they can get it. It's called Billy on Billy. It's an audio memoir. It's out everywhere and anywhere. you can get an audiobook on May 19th. Spotify, Audible, Apple, independent audiobook sellers everywhere. I've loved meeting you.

1:02:05Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much. I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Head on over, please, to danharris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox.

1:02:39Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful. So that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize in your life immediately, either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science. It's short. It's easy to read. It's worth it. It's free. Sign up at danharris.com.

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