Billy Eichner

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Before you came, I was sitting outside and, you know, always trying to talk myself out of: don't make this about you.

This is about the guests.

Please, who you're talking to?

The king of making it about me.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Billy Eichner is one of my favorite kinds of comic actors.

He can go headlong into an outrageous character, whether he's playing Billy on the street or Craig on Parks and Recreation.

Billy also is a very intelligent man, full of empathy, who's done a lot of thinking about what it means to be a creative soul in this world.

I appreciated this opportunity to see that side of him.

Let's meet him now, Billy Eichner.

One of the things I did was, like I said, I devoured

as much as I could of Billy on the Street, Parks and Wreck, and I watched Bros twice.

Oh, wow.

And I have to say, you are a really, really wonderful actor.

Thank you.

Really enjoyed this.

I'm so glad I did this.

So glad I came here today.

Okay, your turn.

Have you seen any of my work?

Actually,

I certainly have, but we'll get to that

in a minute.

On your podcast.

But I did.

I watched it at first, and I think probably

at first I was like, oh, slightly jarred and, you know, and

delighted.

And then I went back and the second time, because I just seen it, I was just amazed at watching you.

And that last.

I'm a sucker for the love story.

Right.

So

that last scene in the museum was just

brilliant.

The speech, the song, all of it was really, really lovely.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

I'm very proud of that movie.

And I really appreciate you watching it and having that reaction.

It means a lot to me.

Thank you.

Do people write into you a lot?

I have, yeah.

And movies have this strange shelf life now because of streaming.

Right.

And I think a lot of people have found it on streaming, not exclusively gay men who it's ultimately about, but a lot of gay men.

And I've gotten so many messages from people.

They come up to me too, in person sometimes, and also write to me privately online.

And

you don't always get a chance to respond to everyone.

You don't always get a chance to respond to everyone you want to.

Some of these messages are extremely moving.

Right.

You know, and

that movie is ultimately about a certain generation of gay men

around my age.

I mean, one hopes that everyone can relate to it.

It's, it's for everyone, but you know, it is about these two middle-aged men falling in love really for the first time.

They've been out their whole lives, but that's different than falling in love for the first time and kind of unraveling all of our

someone described it as

elder millennial gay anxieties.

Wait, I love that.

And I thought that was so brilliant.

I was like, wow, I wish I thought it was

elder millennial, meaning older millennial gay men's anxieties and unpacking all of that and how those get in our way when it comes to relationships and

love and sex and all of it.

And so I think.

you know,

I think it affected and affects hopefully everyone.

You know, it is a a window into our lives, especially for people who don't know much about what it's really like on the day-to-day to date as a gay man of a certain age, but especially gay men.

And they've written to me and just sometimes have really poured their hearts out in ways that

I could never have expected from just writing a romantic comedy.

But because we don't have a ton of films like that, they're out there, but we haven't had a ton of them over the years.

And we don't get a ton of films and TV series that really, in a very specific way, tackle what it is to be a gay adult.

You know, we have a lot of, we have a lot more content now about what it's like to be a queer LGBTQ teenager, 20-something, and that's amazing.

I mean, we never had that when I was a kid.

That is truly remarkable.

And those shows are doing wonderful things for the world.

But I'm not a a teenager and I started writing Bros with Nick Stoller when I was in my late 30s.

And Luke, who plays opposite me in the movie, who didn't write it.

He's also really, really good.

He is so good in it, Luke McFarlane.

And

he's also

a 44-year-old gay man.

So, you know, and we talked a lot about our experiences and, you know, how things that happened to you as a teenager or even in your 20s or 30s,

how those things things get ingrained in you and can ultimately become a real barrier

to being open or vulnerable or in love.

Like what?

What do you mean?

Like incidents?

It's not necessarily an incident.

In my generation of gay men, and by the way, I need to preface this by saying.

I can't speak for all gay people, which is a tricky thing about doing gay content sometimes because you don't get a lot of it.

And so it has to somehow speak to every single member of of the LGBTQ community, which is an impossible thing.

I can only speak to my own experience and those of my friends and people that I've observed over the years.

My experience with being gay, I grew up in New York City.

I was very lucky.

I had very liberal, gay-friendly parents.

It wasn't a huge issue for me to come out.

It wasn't a total non-issue, but it wasn't traumatizing in any way.

I had unbelievable parents and a huge support system

and a lot of exposure to the gay culture just growing up in New York City that you wouldn't otherwise get, especially pre-internet, because I didn't grow up with the internet.

So I didn't have an issue being gay so much as at that point in time, in those years, we really put masculinity on a pedestal, right?

So it was okay to be gay as long as you didn't seem gay.

Right.

You know, and I think we sort of fetishized that when it came to sex and dating and how vulnerable we could be, how effeminate or whatever that means now to people.

You know, these definitions have changed over the years.

But all of that stuff we were really dealing with and not really thinking that that was fucked up even.

We just thought that's how it was.

Right.

So.

You know, we were gay and we were fine with that, but we were attracted to a certain sort of stereotypical version of American, all-American masculinity.

And there was a lot in the culture at the time

that kind of spoke to that, you know, which was kind of, even if it wasn't overtly gay, was appealing to the gay world in a way that really put hyper-masculinity, this kind of jock bro-y behavior on a pedestal, whether that was Marky Mark at the time in Calvin Klein underwear or shirtless, ripped dudes, you know, greeting you at the door at Abercrombie and Fitch in the late 90s, right?

Which is really what it, what, what happened.

You know, when I was in college, that's what you were aspiring to be in a way, or you thought you were supposed to aspire to be.

And that stuff will get in your system when you're a young person and you won't even realize what effect it's having on you.

And I want to talk about your parents.

Because

I read that you said that they were the most supportive of your creativity.

That if you can imagine it, you know, you can be anything you want.

Yeah.

And that to me is a miraculous thing for any person to hear from a parent.

And not all people do.

True.

You don't always get unconditional love growing up.

And that must.

Is that something you realized in hindsight, or did you know at the time that you were getting a

I don't think I realized it fully at the time.

But in hindsight,

there's nothing more clear to me.

That is ultimately underneath it all the reason for however successful I've managed to get.

It is from a very young age, they

let me be me.

And I'm working on a project right now

for Audible.

It's an audio series which really digs into my childhood and teenage years.

And I started working on it not really knowing what it would become because it's a little too early for me to do like a memoir, you know, but I wanted it to be personal.

I've never really talked about those years in detail.

And what it really ends up being now that I'm in the middle of working on it is a love letter to my parents.

Oh, that's great.

And

just thinking about things that happened, my behavior as a kid that they never, I don't know what conversations they secretly had, right?

But in front of me, to me, you know, I was, I was growing up in the 80s in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis, which they as adults must have been even more aware of than I was.

And I was aware of it.

Right.

Because on local news in New York in the 80s, you heard about AIDS and gay men.

And gay men were essentially so vilified and associated with death, and dying, and risk, and sickness, you know, and those were some of my formative years, you know.

And my parents must have seen all of that.

They grew up in New York, too.

My parents, both at different points in their lives, lived in the West Village, so they were not no strangers to like gay culture.

And so I came along in the middle of all of that.

And I was this young kid who,

even at the age of five years old, was obsessed with the entertainment industry, loved Broadway, was obsessed with Madonna,

loved Barbara Streisand.

You know, I like showed all these very obvious signs early on of being gay.

And they embraced all of it.

They took me to Madonna concerts.

They took me to see Streisand.

They took me to see Bette Midler at Radio City Music Hall when I was 12 years old.

And they liked a lot of those same things too, because like because they are outrageous.

They're New Yorkers, right?

And so they, they loved those big personalities too, you know.

And my dad was hilarious.

And I had an older dad, too.

My dad fought in the Korean War.

So he was much older than my mom and had me later in life.

So you would think that would have been an obstacle.

But then you think, oh, when my dad grew up, Barbara Streisand was pop music.

She was pop music to him.

So me as a gay kid loving her, even if he maybe understood, oh, my son's probably gay, he liked that music too.

It was such a strange bond.

And they were not a show business family.

They're a middle class.

We were a middle-class family in Queens, New York.

I grew up in a tiny apartment.

So, not flush necessarily.

No, they were middle-class nine-to-five people, but I was essentially an only child.

I do have a half-brother, but we didn't grow up together.

And I was very much my mother's only child, and I was treated as such, you know, and

they embraced all of it.

I wanted singing lessons.

I got singing lessons, you know.

I had a bar mitzvah.

The one thing I did not want to get bar mitzvah, but it was one of the few things we disagreed on.

Even then, I was just the idea of religion freaked me out.

And I hated going to Hebrew school.

I didn't believe in any of it, but it was the one thing we disagreed on.

And that really meant a lot to them that I got a bar mitzvah.

So I did have a bar mitzvah, but the theme of my party was Broadway meets pop music.

And there was a life-size airbrushed version of Madonna

that was made on one side of the DJ booth.

Life-size three-dimensional.

uh it was like uh it was like it was like airbrushed on what they used to call like foam core yeah you know um and she's in like the cone bra and a garter belt this is at my bar mitzvah because this is what I wanted.

And on one side of the DJ booth was that, and on the other side of the DJ booth was the same kind of airbrushed cardboard cutout of the Phantom of the Opera.

That's pretty, that's a big, wide range.

That's cool.

These are profoundly gay interests.

Right.

And they said, sure, great.

And they just always let me be me.

And that continued.

And that's like the biggest miracle of my life.

Did you have to tell them or did they know that you were gay at some point?

Did you?

I went to Northwestern and they came out to see me in a musical that I was in.

They flew from New York to see me.

And then the next night we went to dinner.

And I'm a junior in college at this point.

And at this point, I'm out to my friends for about a year, but not out to them.

Even though I did not think it would, you know, come as a huge surprise, but I still had to come out.

And at dinner one night, my mother out of nowhere said,

so are you dating anyone?

Boy, girl, whatever.

It's just like that.

Wow.

How amazing is that?

This is 1998.

Boy, girl, whatever.

She just wanted to know if I was dating anyone.

You know?

And I literally said, oh, God.

And

then that night, they drove me back to the apartment I was living in at college.

And I said, okay, pull over.

And they pulled over.

And I said, as it turns out, I'm gay.

And they were totally cool with it.

And, but, you know, it's still like a huge weight off your shoulders, you know, just emotionally.

So I started crying.

And then my mom started crying, but no one was angry or sad at all.

It was just kind of this weight lifted.

And then I said to them at some point, my dad did, my dad for a moment did do the classic thing, like, are you sure it's not a phase?

And I was like, dad.

And I looked at him and I said, Dad, you took me to Barber Streisand concerts that I demanded on going, you know, that I demanded to go to when I was like 12 years old and Broadway shows and Madonna.

I was like, you guys must have known that I was gay.

And he said, Classic Jay Eichner, we discussed the possibility.

And I was like, I bet you have.

And

so they were great, you know, they were, they were great about it, they were great about everything.

I was really lucky.

That was a gift you gave them to bring it up, you know, and answer the question, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, my mother gave me the gift, you know, she was basically saying, it's okay to tell us, you know, we just want to know what's happening in your personal life.

You know, and I always joke because my mother, my mother actually, strangely enough, passed away six months later.

And I always joke around that, you know, now it's like 25 years later, and I'm still not dating anyone.

Like, that's always my joke.

Like, if she was around now, I'd be like, well, I'm still very gay, but still not dating anyone.

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Did your father, who's passed away, is that correct?

Yes, he has.

Did he live long enough to see you be Billy Eigner full-blown?

No,

he

lived long enough to see me come close.

And in my 20s, I started doing a live comedy show in New York that I wrote for myself and my friend Robin Taylor, who was, I pulled in to be my sidekick because I needed a straight man, quote unquote, to play off of, I thought.

And that's where that live show, it was called Creation Nation, is where this persona.

This Billy on the street like persona started to evolve on stage.

It didn't start like that.

I started off just kind of normal and as myself telling jokes.

And then somehow one thing led to another and I started to develop this character that was just irrationally

angry about entertainment to the point where

you would think something else is going on with this person, right?

You know, why is he so angry about this movie that he saw?

Right.

By the way, this predates social media, which is really amazing.

It's like I was satirizing something.

I didn't even know how close to, close to that guy so many people would actually become in real life.

But

because this was the early days of the internet.

And

so it's in that live show where

I said to my friend who was directing it, what if I took this character and we took a camera out on the street and I

went up to people as this persona and forced them to talk to me about Kate Winslet's Oscar Chances, right?

Or, you know, who's more impressive, Meryl Streep or Glenn Close, like all these ridiculous pop culture themes that I would bring up, right?

And force them, you know, force New Yorkers who are so, you know, to be in New York.

I'm a native New Yorker myself.

I grew up on those streets and you all, you have to walk around with blinders on.

Yeah.

There's hundreds of people around you, but you kind of have to act like they're not there.

And, you know, you're just going about your day and getting your work done and doing whatever you have to do.

So I thought, what if I kind of broke that barrier and forced them to talk to me about some ridiculous entertainment industry topic?

But that's a leap, right, from the show you were doing?

Or did it come kind of from that?

We would make these videos and then show them as part of my show on a screen.

You know, this was before YouTube.

The first Billy on the Street video I made was in September of 2004 for a one-off show I was doing in the basement of a Jewish center on the Upper West Side.

And they happened to have a screen and a projector.

So it was a 90-minute show full of sketches and segments and songs I would write, funny songs.

And there was a band and it was like a,

I used to say it's like a variety show where I'm the only act, basically.

Right.

And one of the things we did eventually was this on the street thing.

How did it play that night?

Do you remember?

It killed.

I love it.

It killed.

And probably if I watch that version of it now, you know, we didn't know what we were doing with editing.

We were theater kids.

We didn't know about cameras.

We don't have iPhones at this point.

You know, we had to teach ourselves how to edit on a big desktop, you know, and we just did it in order to make these videos for my live show.

And again, this is before YouTube, but the audience, even from that first one,

they were like falling out of their chairs.

And it's a really cynical, smart New York audience that was following me at this point.

So to impress them and to shock them meant something.

And I swear that first night, I saw the audience reaction to that.

And I thought,

oh, fuck, I'm going to have to keep doing this.

because it's a bitch to do.

And it did not come naturally to me to, I know it's such a cliched comedian thing to say, but I am not that person.

I'm pretty sure.

Which is why you can pull it off.

I have a strong belief that if you were an abrasive, nasty, loud person, you could not be funny doing that.

You wouldn't have the self-awareness.

No, exactly.

Right.

And so, and I thought, I mean, the first time we ever shot the video for that same show in 2004, I had to circle Washington Square Park four times before I worked up the nerve to talk to anyone, let alone shout at them.

I was just talking to them at this point, you know, because I hadn't fully leaned in to the character yet.

So it did not come naturally to me.

And yet I saw the audience reaction and I thought, oh, God, I'm going to have to keep doing this.

It's too funny.

And we did.

And then it's a long story.

You know, YouTube came along a few years later and eventually the videos start going viral, which led to the TV version of it, which really just became ironically a delivery system for more viral videos,

which we took from the TV show.

I used to make a joke about I worked for years

doing videos on YouTube in order to get a TV show, which creates videos that people watch on YouTube.

Yeah.

You know?

Because if you didn't grow, now I guess kids grow up and YouTube is NBC.

I've been told, hey, get rid of all these different characters.

Just have YouTube.

Exactly.

That's all.

Right.

So for me, in my mind, YouTube, I didn't equate YouTube with success because it's not what I grew up with.

You know, you were only successful if you were on TV, like a proper TV show.

So then Billy on the Street becomes a proper TV show on a semi-obscure cable network, but still.

But then the success of it comes from segments taken from that show going viral on YouTube.

Right.

So So I know it was such an odd thing, but yeah.

Let me, I want to keep talking about it, but let me jump in with Joan Rivers.

Yeah.

Was Joan, who you say was a mentor?

Of sorts, yeah.

From a distance or?

Oh, no, in person.

Oh, wow.

And when did that happen?

Was that before?

Billy on the street because there's something about Joan's style of comedy and Billy on the street.

Yeah.

You could draw a line.

Absolutely.

To sum up the story about my dad, because that's how we really started.

So my dad saw all those live shows and he saw some of those Billy on the street videos go viral.

And then

Funny or Die, the production company, got in touch with me and we said we were going to go out and pitch a half hour TV version of the show.

My dad saw the sizzle reel we made to sell that show at pitch meetings, which is like a sample tape that you make to show how the show would function as a half-hour show and not just little quick segments, right?

And we took that around and showed it to execs.

My dad watched that sizzle reel.

And that's the last thing that he saw me do.

And then a month after he died, we went and used that sizzle reel to pitch Billy on the street as a TV show and sold it.

How old was your dad when he died?

He was 80 already.

Oh, right.

You said.

Yeah, he had me later in life.

life

so you know he led a full life but um the timing of it was very strange uh joan rivers which my dad is also connected to

because when i was a kid

my parents and i used to go to what we call like what we called a beach club but was really just a pool in the bronx called shorehaven

And this is where we went over the summers for a number of years when I was very young, you know, between the ages of, I don't know, five and ten.

And they would have performers come sometimes for the adults, and Joan Rivers came.

And I, my parents, once again, being my parents and letting me do whatever I wanted to do and letting me watch whatever I wanted to watch, I watched the most adult things.

I don't mean porn.

I just mean like, you know, things that were meant for adults, serious films and things like that, you know,

art house films and things.

They just let me watch whatever I wanted to watch.

And we watched the tonight show every night.

And I liked Johnny Carson, but what I really loved was Joan Rivers guest hosting for him.

You know, Joan came to perform at the Shorehaven Pool Club or Beach Club when I was a kid.

And it was an adults-only show because Joan was so raunchy, even though it was in the middle of an August afternoon.

But my dad knew that I loved Joan Rivers from watching her on the tonight show.

And I think I'm seven years old at this point.

So he snuck me in to the show and like held me on his shoulders so I could watch Joan perform.

And I vividly recall it.

And years later, I mentioned this show to Joan because she was, she, it was like an 85-degree hot, humid New York summer day, but she still came out in the middle of the afternoon in like a long evening gown and a fur to give you Joan Rivers.

And it, But it was so funny because it was so hot out.

And when I meet Joan years later, I tell her that story and she remembered that show.

She remembered that performance because she said, Yeah, it was so fucking hot.

And I'm there in like a fur coat.

It's very Joan.

So the way that I meet Joan is I'm doing that same live show.

This is in New York between 2005 and 2008.

We did it.

I'm sorry.

No, 2003 to 2008, off and on.

In the middle of that, executives from Bravo come to check me out.

Because at that time, if you remember, Bravo was the only network really putting gay men on the air in any significant way, openly gay men, I should say.

And they did the queer eye and all of that.

They were looking to build off of that.

And they came to scout me

and they liked me.

And at the time, they were putting together a pilot for Joan to host.

called Joan Rivers Straight Talk.

Straight Talk being a play on words because it was was going to be basically a prime time version of the view.

But instead of Barbara Walters and four different types of women, it was going to be more comedic and it was going to be Joan Rivers and four different types of gay men.

Right, doing straight talk.

That's great.

Such a fun idea.

But this is before, just before Joan had her resurgence.

Right?

Before her documentary came out and before she won Celebrity Apprentice.

So she's not, in her words, like super hot at that moment.

But Bravo did this pilot, and they were looking to cast it, cast the game in it.

So they came to my show and they had me come in and audition for Joan.

And then Joan, she liked me at the audition.

And so she came to see my show in this 90-seat theater, you know, because she loved theater, Joan.

And she

just really got me.

And she loved me did she see a clip of billy on the street oh yeah she saw the whole video when she came to the show and then i kept auditioning to be part of the panel they cast me on it i guess i was supposed to be like the joy behar or something the funny one and then andy cohen before he got his own show he was on the panel too um and a couple of other people and that pilot ended we shot it but it did not get picked up we did a billy on the street video for the pilot, as if that might be a recurring segment on the show, should it get picked up, but it was not picked up.

But Joan and I really bonded during that process.

And like I said, she came to see my live show

and she just loved how outrageous.

I was and she just totally got it on every level.

And I think she could feel my drive.

You know, we were both, I was a gay Jewish kid who grew up in, in Queens and obsessed with show business, but from afar, not in a show business family and not conventional looking necessarily, like a definite outsider.

And she had similar aspects to her story, you know, and

she, we just ended up staying close.

And

I reached out to her once a couple of years later.

And at this point, I was starting to get really frustrated because everyone was coming to my show and watching my videos and telling me how great I am, but I couldn't get a job.

You know, in the classic words of my father, again, if you're such a genius, why can't you get three lines on law and order?

Okay.

By the way, he wasn't insulting me.

He was.

frustrated himself.

He was like, I don't understand.

People come to your show and they're falling out of their seats laughing and all these agents and executives.

And then you can't get a job that even pays like $50.

Like, you know, how come it's not adding up?

And I was getting frustrated too.

And I reached out to Joan and I said, I don't know what to do.

You know, how much longer can I go being told I'm all these very nice things, but no one's giving me a job.

So what am I supposed to do?

And she said,

she did a weekly stand-up show in New York for charity, Joan, literally up until the day she died.

I think the night before she went in for that procedure that ended up killing her, she did stand-up at this tiny little club, you know.

And so, she said, Come to my stand-up show.

I'll set some seats aside for you and a friend, and then we'll go upstairs and we'll have drinks and we'll talk.

So, we did.

And we went for drinks with Joan after.

And she had watched me for a few years now kind of have this frustration, you know.

And she just gave me the most amazing pep talk.

And, you know, and she talked about how many years it took her to get on the tonight show as a guest and how it took someone, she was so unconventional, but it took someone like Johnny Carson, who was that respected and that revered and that quote-unquote mainstream to basically say,

this woman is going to is going to be on my show a lot.

And, you know, give her that stamp of approval so that anyone who might have been scared with her, scared of her or not known what to do with her,

that fear went away just because he gave her the stamp of approval.

So she basically said, you know,

you just need that.

You know, it took me years to get that.

And she gave me an amazing pep talk.

And then

anyway, she was putting together fashion police at this point, which became a show she did for E, which was very successful.

And she said, I'm putting you in that pilot.

And so I made a Billy on the Street style video for that.

Was this involved around the Oscars?

No, this wasn't Fashion Position Police at the Oscars.

It had started as a series of specials she did, which then turned into a weekly series for E.

Gotcha.

So she wanted me on that.

But even again, like, the executives weren't quite sure,

you know,

a lot lot of questions around it.

And then

not long after that,

that kind of gave me this, this little push that I needed to just stay in the game a little bit longer and see what happens.

And she was very complimentary, and she named all these comedians who were now huge, but that she had watched come up, you know, and she said, they remind me of you.

You know, you just need to, what, I mean, maybe she was just being nice.

But that little push, I even went, I even went and told my dad after, who at this point was starting to get a little nervous about what was going to happen to me, rightfully so.

And I even said to him, I was like, well, I just saw Joan and she said, I have to stay in the game a little bit longer.

And as nervous as he was, remember, Joan and my dad, because he's older, are from the same generation.

So he really respected Joan too.

And he even said, he was like, well, if Joan says that, you got to do it.

That's so great.

Right.

And so I end up sticking with it.

And not long after that,

got an email out of the blue from Funny or Die

that led to Billy on the Street becoming a TV show.

And the very first season of it, you know, it became known as a show which had all these celebrity guests run around with me.

But I didn't know any celebrities when it started.

Right.

So the, I happened to know Rachel Dratch from SNL, from New York.

I knew her, and she was hilarious.

She had done bits on my live show over the years.

So the first season of Billy on the Street, the TV version of it, there's only two celebrity guests, Rachel Dratch and Joan Rivers.

That's it.

And obviously, it all slowly but surely snowballed after that.

But, you know, and then Joan passed away not

too long after that.

And Let me tell you one more quick story because I have to.

In those years

when I was struggling, and I I think it was after that, the drinks I had with her that night where she could hear my frustration,

not only did she put me on fashion police just for the pilot of it, but

she said, I want you to put your

man on the street videos on DVDs and drop them off in my lobby.

Because at this point, Joan, after decades of being blackballed from mainstream late night TV because of Johnny Carson, she was finally being allowed to make the rounds again because her documentary had come out and was a hit and people had a newfound appreciation for her.

So all these late night hosts, Letterman

and all of them, which had all declined to have her on for years and years.

Sorry to interrupt, but why?

Because Johnny Carson.

basically blacklisted her when she in the 80s decided to stop being his fill-in host and host her own show opposite him.

Oh, oh, okay.

So there's a long history there that's very fascinating and you can go into.

And Joan, you know,

she still loved Johnny because he made her career.

It was just this very unfortunate falling out they had.

And for many, many, many years, she could not get on a proper late night.

talk show because all the guys hosting those shows were, you know, so reverent towards Johnny, even though he wasn't even alive anymore.

But Joan had a resurgence at this point.

And so she was making the late night rounds again for the first time in years, which was a huge thing for her.

And she said, I want you to drop off DVDs of your videos.

And when I go to these late night shows, I'm going to leave your DVDs with all the showrunners and tell them you have to watch this guy.

Right.

I mean, people thought Joan was my grandmother because she was so nice to me.

And I would have to explain that it, no, we had no actual blood relation.

And I don't even know why she's being so nice to me, but she is.

And she went and did Letterman

at this time.

And she dropped off the DVDs with Letterman, and I guess, you know, or his producer.

And I'm sure they were like, oh, yeah, okay, well, sure, we'll watch these DVDs of this random guy.

Okay.

You know, they probably never did.

But then Billy on the Street became a show, and the videos start going viral.

And And who calls to book me who has now discovered me and is a huge fan, but Letterman.

Right.

And when you think about it, it makes sense because Letterman really created the on the streets, you know, this anarchic on the street thing that I was, you know, clearly very influenced by.

And I watched, again, going back to my parents, even when I was like seven years old, they would go to bed and let me stay up and watch Letterman when he was on at 1230.

And they would say, why don't you go to bed?

You're in, you have to get up, you have school.

And I was like, I'm not tired.

I need to watch Letterman.

And they were like, okay.

And so I would, you know, and I went up and I, then I got up and went to school and was like a very good student, a total nerd.

It didn't seem to affect me.

This is just what I like to do.

And so Letterman was a huge influence on me.

Right.

And so

then Letterman, you know, became a fan.

And I end up getting booked on Letterman for the first time.

And I think in between getting booked on Letterman and actually doing the show, Joan died.

It was literally a few weeks later.

And the timing of it was so strange.

But

yeah,

Joan, she was really.

And look, she was a complicated person for sure.

You know, and you hear stories about everyone, every, you know.

In my experience with her, it was

this shocking level of support and encouragement from a true legend who just felt that I

that she wanted to help me out?

Yeah.

And I really needed it at the time.

This is going to sound, I don't know, either self-serving or weird or whatever, but

before you came, I was sitting outside and,

you know, always trying to talk myself out of, don't make this about you.

This is about the guests.

Please, who you're talking to?

The king of making it about me.

Right.

So, and then I had this thought

about your parents

and wanting

them.

This is the weird part, to feel good about this interview.

And then you just said,

and I was also circled Joan because I thought, that's amazing.

Because I do see

whether I'm making it up or not, some of Billy in the Street has that same kind of Joan energy that she was so good at.

Anyway, the image I'll always walk away from, excuse me, from this conversation is you on your father's shoulder at nine, you know, 90 degrees, because your father wanted you to see Joan because he knew that you would appreciate that.

That's an amazingly supportive, astounding thing.

That tells you all you need to know about your father.

Oh, yeah.

In my mind.

Sorry, over here.

That's absolutely true.

And

yeah, yeah, that's, I was going to say, that's the secret.

It's not a secret.

It's, it's, it explains everything.

Um, and it explains why, even in my, my worst moments of self-doubt, um,

having that safety net, you know, you're just taught from a young age that it's all going to be okay,

you know, because we're here for you.

Even in their absence, all of these years,

that feeling really stays with you.

You know?

It does.

It does.

Now, let me tell you one story about my dad involving you, because this is a natural segue,

because we've never met, I don't think.

And I was thinking about you and your career.

And of course, needless to say, you're a legend.

And of course, I grew up watching cheers and all the movies and everything and loving you.

But there's one movie which doesn't get quite as much attention, but I really associate you with it for a specific reason.

It's the movie you did called Dad.

With Jack Lemon.

With Jack Lemon and a young Ethan Hawk.

I believe

Ethan Hawk.

And look at him now.

So my parents, again, being pretty into entertainment themselves as an interest.

and also wanting me to be happy, I loved the movies.

So

there was a period in my childhood where we literally went to the movies every Saturday night, just the three of us, right?

And I almost always chose the movie, right?

Sometimes they're more adult things.

Sometimes they were superhero movies.

It was everything, indie movies, popular movies.

It was everything,

right?

So we went to see dad, the film dad.

And I remember it, A, I remember loving the movie and being really moved by it.

But the specific thing I remember is my dad, you know, he was a New Yorker and he was blunt and he grew up in the Bronx, but he was still from a different generation of man

and he was pretty stoic, right?

And that movie, Dad.

I remember him crying at that movie.

And at the time, he was dealing with his father, my grandfather, who was getting older and liked the Jack Lemon character.

He was even more difficult than the Jack Lemon character in the movie.

And he was impossible to deal with.

And him and my grandmother had been married 65 years and he was driving her insane.

And he just became this very unhappy old man.

And my dad was dealing with that.

And I remember, I honestly think it's the first memory I have, and one of the very few memories I have of my father crying during any experience was watching that movie.

And I remember, and I was a young kid.

I remember thinking, whoa,

dad is crying at dad.

No, but really, it really stuck with me.

And that movie just moved him.

I mean, it moved, we were all crying.

Everyone in the theater was crying.

It's a very sad, moving film.

But I just wanted to tell that to you because that memory has stuck in my head all all these years.

You know, that's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, it's a beautiful movie and underappreciated, maybe.

Yeah.

Gary Goldberg, wrote, directed that.

I know I did a deep dive on it last night before we came here.

Diving together.

Yeah, that's great.

I know.

I read a whole Wikipedia entry for dad.

That led me down a long road with Ethan Hawk and Jack Lemon and Grumpy Old Men.

I ended up on the page for Grumpier Old Men, the sequel.

That led me to Anne Margaret.

It was a long night.

Walter Mathow.

Wow.

Jack Lemmon.

Come on.

Jack Lemon once invited, I love this story, invited

Walter to go see a screening of a movie that he was a little bit nervous about.

And

it was an early screening, and they sat and watched it very quietly together alone in a theater.

And the lights come up, and Jack turns to Walter and goes, well,

and Walter said,

I'd get out of it if you can.

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Let me just go back for the silly kind of anecdotes about

on the street.

Have you ever been attacked?

Has anything gone awfully wrong?

I loved the one, and I can't remember names, so I'm terrible, but it was a black woman who you talked to, and then she got halfway across the street, and your parting line was very funny, but on her back, and she turned around and let you have it.

Oh, yeah.

She said.

And I can't remember who loved it and started

writing some singer, somebody, some actress.

Oh, I was asking her about La La Land and Emma Stone.

Right.

Yeah.

And I asked her if she thought this was during the La La Land is like, you know, nominated for Oscars at this point, and we're leading up to the Oscars, whatever year that was.

And I asked her if she was waiting for the La La Land hype to die down, this random woman in the street.

She really had no time for me.

You know, she had real shit going on in her life.

I walk away from her, and then she starts crossing the street, and she looks back at me and says,

I don't know who you're trying to sass for a fucking camera, but you've got the right bitch to put put you in the wrong motherfucking place.

She just improvised that.

I mean, that was her genuine reaction to me, and I was so grateful.

I thought it was brilliant.

Quick question.

Do you have to get people's permission to show that?

Every single person that I speak to on the street signed a release afterwards.

Did and she did.

She did.

Yeah, no, we're legally.

That's one thing they would not let me mess around with, especially if I'm yelling at people and stuff.

There's another woman I get into a big fight with, and what is, I think, maybe based on views online, maybe the most seen clip.

It has

online alone, not counting whoever watched the original half-hour show on Netflix or whatever,

it has over a hundred million views.

This clip, I get into this fight with the woman.

She doesn't recognize me, and she's not happy with me for being getting up in her face.

And we end up cursing out each other, and she ends up walking away.

For those of you who know, it's the clip where the woman, she's like a middle-aged white woman, and she says, Is this a TV thing or an internet thing?

And I said, Actually, it's a TV thing and an internet thing.

And we get up into each other's face, and she's like, I don't like your attitude.

And I was like, I don't like your attitude.

And she says, Who gives a shit?

And she walks away.

And I said, Who gives a shit about you, bitch?

And I saw that.

Yes, I saw that.

It's a very popular clip.

They're going to play that at my funeral, sadly.

So that woman walks away,

and then it's up to my producers to go up to her.

Clean up on her.

Yeah, exactly.

And so they have to explain what this is because, you know, it always becomes a tense thing.

It's like, oh, fuck, that is, we know that's going to be funny, but will this person sign the release?

Because it's funny because she genuinely got angry, but that's also why she might not sign the release.

So they go up to her, and you know, we're in New York near Union Square.

And my producers explain, you know, he's a comedian, he has a show.

At this point, I think it's season four or five.

So at this point, they had the advantage of being able to take out their phones and be and show her, oh, look, here he is with Will Farrell, and here he is with Tina Faye.

You know, he's a comedian.

And that woman, who was genuinely angry, said,

You know what?

When I was younger, I dated Andy Kaufman.

So I understand what he's doing and I'll sign the release.

Astounding.

Only in New York City.

Yeah.

By the way, she must have.

Only Andy.

Only Andy and only in New York City.

I dated Andy Kaufman.

So I understand this Billy on the street thing.

So I'll sign the release.

Like, you can't make that up.

That is a magical moment.

Yeah.

God bless New York City.

Seriously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She got mad at me

and was quick and biting.

Oh, God.

she was hilarious.

Would have ripped you.

I mean, I loved it.

You know, I thought it was hilarious.

It was a perfect encapsulation of what the satire of that show is,

which is this maniac who is so obsessed with the entertainment industry and the minutiae of it and award season and all of it that can't see beyond that at all.

And why would you?

How could you?

I love also with very well-known celebrities, actors walking with you.

And the people have, do you know who this is?

No, no, no idea.

No, I know.

Chris Pratt, at like the height of his movie super stardom.

Everyone thinks he's, oh, he's Chris Pine.

Someone says, oh, you're Josh Dumel.

They don't even look alike, really.

I mean, and it's, yeah, I mean, that to me is at the heart of that show.

And it evolved over the years into certain things that were just silly or absurd.

But at the heart of it is a satire of my own,

my own love-hate relationship with my own fascination with Hollywood.

You know?

Yeah.

I'm taking that to its extreme.

No, it's brilliant.

It is brilliant.

Acting.

Did you,

were you part of upright

upright citizens brigade?

Yeah.

No, I

did.

Well, I was in that.

I took all the classes.

Right.

I did go to Upright Citizens Brigade after Northwestern.

At Northwestern, I just did theater.

There's a huge improv scene at Northwestern, but I was not part of it.

So you were training to be actor.

Oh, yeah.

That's all I wanted to be.

I just wanted to be on Broadway, you know, because my parents took me to see all that theater when I was a kid.

And I saw Nathan Lane in Guys and Dolls in 1992.

And I said, oh, that's.

That's the greatest thing ever.

Nothing will ever get better than that.

And I want to do that.

Have you let go of that?

Or why don't you write a musical?

Write a musical.

It only takes 11, 12 years.

Exactly.

It'll have to be grumpier old men, the musical.

That's how old I would be by the time that, by the way, I'm sure someone has tried writing that.

I don't know about writing a musical.

That's really hard and it takes forever.

But I would love to do some theater in New York.

It's what I started out wanting to do and now sort of strangely the only thing I haven't dabbled in.

So I would love to do that.

But yeah, I just wanted to, you know, I was in theater class doing Beckett and Pinter and Chekhov and all the real shit.

I know I say that on people who are like, huh?

But I love that because that is the, you would not go, ah, Billy on the street.

Yeah, here he is doing Pinter.

Of course, but Billy on the Street was just.

this odd creation.

And to me, even though it's not acting in the traditional sense, it's not

a full-blown character.

It's a character.

And it requires, in a way, it is acting 101 because the main thing

with acting is listening.

Working off the number.

Right.

And you bet if I'm not listening real close,

that I can't do it.

And

what's really interesting about Billy on the Street is that, you know,

we all make assumptions about people.

So I would go up to someone thinking, I have some clue as to what this person's going to know about or not know about

by how they look in some way, age or how they're dressed or something.

I'm always wrong.

It truly is a lesson in don't judge a book by its cover, especially in New York City, right?

And so.

The little old lady will kick your ass.

Exactly.

And wait.

You have opinions about things that you just would not.

Like, why does this 80-year-old woman even know who Selena Gomez is, let alone have all of these very like detailed opinions.

Oh, and I saw her on The View and I saw her on Good Morning America.

And you're like, wait, what?

And all of a sudden, you're in a 45-minute conversation with this elderly woman about, you know, Selena Gomez.

And so, but that's the beauty of New York City and the beauty of, you know, of the show, I guess.

But for me, it was a character.

And I did, it did require certain things I had learned in acting school, even though if you had told me when I was at Northwestern that my big break was going to be running around the streets of New York, talking, shouting at real people, I would have thought you were out of your mind.

Yeah.

You know, it just kind of happened.

It was one idea out of many and

just connected.

What I thought was brilliant about Bros was your performance was you took

people, well,

at least my perception of you at that point was mostly based on Billy.

Of course.

And you took enough of that

and brought it with you and then

expanded into this.

You know,

you're not this

angry,

afraid of relationship, who gives a fuck, who needs you.

You are a vulnerable, da-da-da-da-da-da.

And that on, you know, that's the story.

That's the story.

And I truly, by the end, you really are fantastic.

You really, really are.

And you just, thank you.

You made the love story totally work.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Worked really, really hard on that movie.

Movies, as you know,

especially when you're writing it.

So start that.

Go back.

How did this all take place?

You decided you wanted to write or

no, no, no, no, no, no.

I did a,

I had one scene or two scenes in a movie Nick Stoller wrote and directed, which was the sequel to Neighbors with Seth Rogan.

Right.

Nick did the original one.

I'm not in that.

But he put me in a few scenes in the sequel to it.

Okay, we had a nice time.

A few years later, he casts me in a recurring role to play Fred Savage

was playing a gay character on a show on Netflix called Friends from College, which had two seasons, I believe.

with Keegan Michael Key and Fred Savage, an amazing cast.

And Nick and his wife co-created that show and he directed all the episodes.

And they wanted someone to play Fred's boyfriend and then husband on the show.

And he put me in it.

And I think on Friends from College, he

realized that I was an actor.

You know, that I was a real actor.

I was, in his words,

the story he tells, which I don't even know at the time, but the premiere of Friends from College, it was a Netflix show, but the premiere was at a movie theater.

They showed the first two episodes at a movie theater in New York.

And he said that when he saw me on the movie screen and the audience's reaction to me, he thought, we can build a movie around Billy.

And he loves romantic comedies.

And he, he, you know, he had done Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

By the way, that's a huge phrase to say that we can build a movie around this actor because that

not everybody can do that.

Great character actors, great, right?

Wonderful actors.

Some would tell you he made a horrible mistake, but

it got handed to the guy.

Go ahead.

So he said that to him.

That's what like sparked the idea.

And then he reached out to me and said, he emailed me out of the blue and said, hey, I love making romantic comedies.

I want my next movie to be a romantic comedy, but I think it would be cool if it was about a gay couple because we don't get a lot of that, but I'm not gay.

So do you want to write it with me?

And we can build it as a vehicle for you and I'll direct it.

And he even mentioned then, you know, he has a close relationship with Judd Apatau.

So he thought Judd, Judd had been looking for years to do a gay-centric film and had tried a couple of times and it never made it all the way through.

And so he thought Judd would come on as a producer.

And I was shocked.

and baffled.

I was like, what?

I've never written a movie.

I've never even had a large supporting role in a live action movie, let alone be the lead.

You know, I've done TV things, but it's a little different.

And I said, okay, let's meet about it.

So we met about it.

And I just said, okay, well, I don't know if I can do this.

And I don't even know if I have a story to tell.

Because I do love romantic comedies and always have.

But at the same time, I'm not a big relationship person like the guy in the movie, though I have had a couple of experiences, you know, which ended up inspiring, loosely inspiring what happens in the movie.

And,

you know, we just started meeting and hashing out what the story would be.

It's a fascinating process because it really becomes like a series of therapy sessions, ultimately.

You know, for any writer, I think they understand that.

I know a writer who I'm working with now on something who's written in so many different genres of film and TV, but he says everything is inspired by the fact that he's still heartbroken over this one woman that dumped him.

Everything.

Even like a horror movie hero somehow still, you know, is like springs from that.

So

it became like a series of therapy sessions where I really had to dig deep and figure out, okay, like, well, what is the source of

of my status as a person who does date or doesn't date or

a lot?

And thinking about my friends,

many of whom are also gay men around my age and who are also,

you know, a lot of them are great catches in every way, but still single, you know?

And I thought about how gay men of my particular generation, again, I'm 45, like the generation 10 years plus above us.

And the generation 10 years plus below us,

there is such an enormous generation gap, right?

In terms of what the world was like between those two generations, culture and politics.

The generation above mine, I don't like to define them by saying they're the AIDS generation, but for many of them, their lives were forever impacted by that.

And that is a reality losing

AIDS.

AIDS.

You know, because they lived through that.

I was alive and aware of it and still was, you know,

HIV was certainly an issue when I came out of the closet, but not to the degree that it was for the guys who were a bit older than me.

And hence were

what, more apt to be in a relationship?

Oh, oh, no, no, no.

I'm just talking about the generation gap between the two generations.

You know, so you have those guys, right?

A lot of whom lost their friends in their 20s and 30s, and they had no civil rights, no equal protection under the law.

A lot of them didn't come out until later in life.

Then you have have the kids, I say kids, 10 years younger than me, plus, who are LGBTQ,

who grew up with so much more representation.

I'm not saying they don't have their own set of unique challenges.

Of course, they do,

especially trans folks, but it's very different than it was.

Yes.

Right.

And we didn't grow up with Repulse Drag Race and Heartstopper and all of this representation and the internet, which made it, even if you were in the middle of nowhere,

easy to at least access queer people online somehow.

You know, so, and my generation is very much perched between these two generations.

And it's just an odd, interesting, fascinating place to be.

And I think about that a lot.

And some of the themes I talked about earlier, where in my generation, you know, I thought,

or at least among my gay friends, I shouldn't say my, I can't speak for the whole generation, but at least among the people that I know and myself, I had no problem with being gay, but there was this fascination and this drive to be masculine, right?

To exhibit this type of broy behavior that that was sexy or, you know,

and that's kind of what, you know, you were going after in some way.

And that leads to

putting up walls emotionally,

you know, to

exhibit this kind of stereotypically masculine behavior.

Of course, it's all stereotypes, of course.

But

when you're young, you don't realize that.

And

I think that

there is something to all of that, which I was trying to unpack in the middle of what also had to be a kind of fizzy and funny rom-com.

You know?

But I'm more kind of serious-minded than people think.

And so

I think, and even Nick, I think, at one point was surprised by kind of where I wanted to go with it.

But that's just what felt right to me.

Which, which part?

You know,

for instance, you know, there's a, well, A, the first thing I said to him, even at our first meeting, was, look, I don't know what this movie is going to be.

I don't know if I have the skills to do any of this.

But

what it cannot be is, oh, it's when Harry met Sally, but it happens to star two gay characters because the way we conduct our lives is very different.

You know, some gay men live heteronormative, as they say, lives, and they go and they get married and have adopt kids and they live behind the white picket fence, and that's wonderful, and that's one way to go.

But a lot of the gay men I know do not do that.

And we do stay single longer and we do have open relationships, and there are different conversations, different understandings about monogamy or lack thereof, you know?

And I,

and what I insisted on is that to the best of my ability, and yes, within the framework of a major studio romantic comedy, I needed to be honest about these things,

you know?

What I said to Nick was the most important thing to me, yes, I want it to be relatable to everyone.

Yes, we, you know, you want straight folks and younger people and older people, you want everyone in on it.

You don't want it to be alienating or unclear.

But my main priority is I want my gay friends to go and say yes.

Yeah.

Like, that's it.

Like, you, you know, you, you're, you get it.

I'm sitting here grinning at myself because I watched and I was,

I was, I don't know about scared.

That's a little heavy, but I was like,

and I, and I,

I stopped watching it.

And then I went, nope, I'm going to keep watching it.

And then I got, and I went from like the last third on, and I went, Ted, you're an idiot.

Because

I got that full-blown love story, full-blown human characters, full-blown everything, and was

enchanted by it.

I mean, it's really good.

Went back and watched the whole thing in a much more relaxed, calm way.

And I think you really nailed it to me.

I really do.

Thank you.

And the journey,

you know, because you did have to, both of you had to give up something to be willing to at least be in a three-month monogamous relationship or whatever.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's our happy ending.

Which is pretty hard.

I'm trying to give it away, but you've had a year or whatever.

But no, yeah.

And it was important to me that both characters, that Luke's character too had his own arc, you know, and that he wasn't just the pretty face, that there's more going on underneath that surface too.

And it's funny because we're very, very different characters,

but we share kind of the same issue.

We just show it.

It just manifests differently, you know, towards the beginning of the movie.

And he's very much, you know, leading with his like aesthetic, essentially, like that's his armor against the world.

And my character is

leading with his intellect and kind of his militancy and his activism.

Right.

You know, and

but they are both.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong.

There's, it's great to lead with your intellect.

And it's also great to be beautiful and look like Luke McFarlane.

But I would imagine.

But

so those aren't bad things.

And sex is great and physical attraction.

All that stuff is important.

But

there was a

with both characters, there is a fear of letting those different guards down.

Yeah.

And they have to, ultimately.

So, yeah.

I really thought you nailed it.

I really

like it.

So I don't know if your brain works this way about targeting or thinking ahead,

but

10 years from now, what do you want to be doing?

More directing, more writing, more acting?

Well, I'm starring in the Grumpier Old Men Reboot, for sure.

What do I want to do?

You know, again, I'm in a period now where I am

trying to get back to what I really wanted to do, which is to act more.

That becomes

in our culture at large and in our industry, especially, it's a pretty narrow-minded place a lot of the time.

You know, a lot of people, not just gay actors, you know, people do get stereotyped as the one thing, that first thing that people saw you do that they liked.

For me, that's Billy on the street.

Okay, but you just went from Billy on the street, if you had to put names to it, character actor to leading man.

You did that.

With bros.

I really do believe that.

You look at the last 30 minutes or whatever and you go, oh, wow, that's powerful leading man.

Thank you.

I don't, it's funny that I don't really think, and I'm not being self-deprecating.

I

would be very comfortable and probably always assumed, at least when I was younger, that I would just be a character actor.

Me too.

And that's the way to go, by the way.

Yeah, totally.

Absolutely.

And I certainly never, I mean, what happened with Bros was I never for a second, if left to my own devices, I would have never thought, oh, yeah, I'm going to write a rom-com lead for myself.

This would have never in a million years happened.

It's only because Nick thought that I could and

I had the opportunity.

So I took it and I went with it.

Let me jump in because that's a big, big thing right there, which is willingness.

Sometimes people say, how did you make it?

How do you,

how do I succeed?

There's a will, you need to be willing to, to go through a lot of crap, drop a lot of

check your ego at the door.

There's a lot you need to give up and be willing to give up.

Not bad stuff, but be willing to give up to be successful.

And that feels like what you've done.

Thank you.

I mean,

I think that's true.

It's certainly

when you are any type of unconventional anything in this business,

it probably means you're going to have to work a bit harder.

It just does.

And,

you know, and then to have had Billy on the Street, which I love and I'm so grateful for and love how much people love it.

You know, now for me, it's about going beyond that.

It's basically what happens in bros.

Like, you know, we built it that way for a reason that the movie starts off and you're like, oh, wow, this is like an intense

person,

you know.

But it's about unraveling that because everyone is multi-dimensional, you know, and in a way, that's kind of my story

off camera too, professionally,

is to,

you know,

I want to just be able to play different types of people to not always lean into that persona.

Would you be willing to write them for yourself?

I will probably have to if history is any guide.

a good idea but that's good.

That's a good thing.

It's good.

Sort of.

I mean, well, the reason why you may have to is not good,

but the fact that you would write and have that creative part of your soul

get exercised is a pretty cool thing.

Strangely enough, the writing or the be the

being able to self-generate, right?

That was what made it all happen.

You know, I never thought of of myself as a writer.

And I would dabble sometimes.

I would write jokes or bits or things.

In high school, I did a little improv.

And

I never in a million years would have thought

that writing would be so much a part of it.

But whether it's Billy on the Street, creating that for myself, Bros, which even though the idea of doing it came from someone else.

When all was said and done, I still had to lead the charge there from a writing standpoint and teach myself how to do all of that.

I mean, Nick taught me a lot about structure, but I had to just kind of lean in and go for it and believe that I could write funny, natural-sounding dialogue and flesh out characters and you know, create this fictional world.

And so, the writing really has saved me.

It just is also

something I didn't expect

would be

partially by

necessity, such a a big part of the process for me, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

You know, is your life almost all about creativity or do you do stupid stuff?

What's your day off?

What's your day off

being creative and confronting the world and all that?

What's your day off?

Oh, by the way, I am totally lazy and love not working.

I mean, that is a, I love not working.

I, sometimes I think people, there was a point in my life, I was so driven to make it all happen, but now it's happened enough.

Like, I don't need to be the most famous or the richest or this, that, and the other thing.

I want to keep working and being creative and doing things.

But like, trust me, I'm also,

I'm not, I know some people who do what we do who

are enormously successful.

You know, some of the most successful producer writers in our business, right?

And I just, I have profound respect for for them, but they, in a way, sometimes I'm happy that I'm driven, but I don't have that level of drive.

And I'm kind of relieved that I don't have that gene.

Yeah.

Maybe it goes back to my parents.

I think it does, honestly.

It all goes back to that, you know, like, yeah, I want to be successful and all that, but I don't want it to define every moment of my life.

And I just want to be a normal human being, which luckily I think I've gotten to be.

So I'm not as obsessed with it as people might think.

I just work hard when

the time comes to work hard.

What other things do I like to do?

I don't know.

I have no fucking hobbies.

Do I have hobbies?

I don't.

Not.

I like to work.

I mean, I read and watch stuff and I scroll too much on my phone.

That's not a hobby.

That's a terrible thing to do with your life that I'm doing constantly.

I'm trying to think.

I mean, I don't know.

I have an old group of friends.

I'm really lucky.

I have a really, I don't have a big surviving family, but I have a old group of friends and we are still New York days.

From New York, from college.

Right.

I still, I'm on a, on a thread every day with,

that that consists of my best friend since high school, since high school, who is still my best friend.

I talk to him nearly every single day.

We're on a text thread with him and all my old college friends who he knows now for years through me.

And we literally text each other every single day.

And we're all over the country, but we're very close.

And I spend a lot of time with my friends.

And we go way back.

And

for the most part

there are a couple of exceptions but we weren't

we weren't from show business families

you know we weren't even from particularly wealthy families so a lot of us have had to scrape and crawl our way to success so we really appreciate it we have a sense of humor about it um

and you know we like to have a good time it's uh because life is too short to be caught up in all this show business nonsense all the time My hobby is hanging out with Mary.

That is such a good hobby.

I want that hobby.

Yeah.

Can I come over?

Yes, please.

We don't even get out of bed.

If we're not, you know, jumping in a car and going to work at five in the morning, right?

Then we're, you know, we're in bed drinking two or three cups of coffee and playing Wordle for an hour and a half.

That sounds like heaven.

Sorry, it is.

I want to be in bed with you guys playing Wordle, talking incessantly about my career trajectory.

Billy, I am so chuffed that I got to sit around and talk to you.

I like that because are you kidding?

Ted Danson.

You probably would never have had me on, you know, Billy on the street for some time.

But I got an hour.

That's true.

I got an hour plus

just talking to you.

You're going to get me in bed.

That's where you and Mary and me, that's where we're going to end up.

I think it's good that you add, because Mary can be jealous.

And the and Mary.

Oh, man.

Are you going to be a man?

I'd be jealous because.

I'm a gay man.

Mary has to be there.

Are you kidding me?

But yes, thank you so much for having me.

It's an honor.

And

please cut this down.

I'm sure you will.

I always talk too much on these things.

No, you didn't.

And I got to say, I have blazoned in my imagination

nine-year-old you on your father's shoulders is an image I don't think I'll ever forget.

That was such a cool story.

Wow.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That's that means a lot.

Yeah.

Have a great rest of your day.

Thank you.

You too, Tedanson.

That was the super talented Billy Eichner.

Thank you, Billy, for

being here and talking with me.

So appreciate it.

That's it for our show this week.

Special thanks to Woody and our friends at Team Coco.

You all remember Woody, Woody Harrelson, star of film, stage, and TV.

Anyway, I miss him.

If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone you love as always subscribe on your favorite podcast app and give us a great rating and review on Apple podcasts if you have a sec be sure and check this episode out on YouTube too that's T-O-O not T-double

see you next time where everybody knows your name

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Dance and Woody Harrelson.

Sometimes the show is produced by me, Nick Leow.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apodaka.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grawl.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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