BILLY EICHNER HAS MASTERFULLY WALKED A DELICATE TIGHTROPE, BALANCING A HEARTFELT DEVOTION TO POP CULTURE WITH A BITING PARODY OF HOLLYWOOD'S ABSURDITIES. HIS ABILITY TO NAVIGATE THESE TWO SEEMINGLY OPPOSING FORCES HAS MADE HIM A SINGULAR PRESENCE IN ENTERTAINMENT. WHETHER DELIVERING RAZOR-SHARP COMMENTARY ON THE LATEST CELEBRITY NEWS, HOSTING IRREVERENT GAMES ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK, OR VOICING ANIMATED CHARACTERS WITH EQUAL PARTS WIT AND CHARM, EICHNER MANAGES TO BOTH CELEBRATE AND CRITIQUE THE INDUSTRY IN A WAY THAT FEELS SIMULTANEOUSLY AFFECTIONATE AND HONEST. BILLY ON THE STREET IS A MANIFESTATION OF THIS PUSH AND PULL. THE CHARACTER IS A DEEPLY DISTANT YET INTIMATELY CLOSE PORTRAYAL OF HIS 12-YEAR-OLD SELF, A PERFECT EMBODIMENT OF STAN CULTURE. THIS DUALITY COMES THROUGH IN HIS RECENT ROLE IN MUFASA: THE LION KING, WHERE HIS TAKE ON TIMON CLEVERLY BALANCES NOSTALGIA WITH A MODERN EDGE, INFUSING THE ROLE WITH HUMOUR AND HEART IN A BELOVED STORY.

Suit **Fendi**, shirt **Dior Men** archive, boots **Dsquared2**

I read that you had a Madonna-themed bar mitzvah. I need to know more about it.

So, I know it’s been widely reported that it was Madonna-themed but that is not 100% accurate. The actual theme was Broadway meets pop music.

Left Sweater **Loro Piana**
Right Shirt **Bottega Veneta**

Oh, that’s so much better, somehow even gayer.

Exactly, see the thing is, I couldn’t decide which one I liked more so I thought, “Why not?” There was an almost life-sized airbrushed portrait of Madonna in the Blonde Ambition Tour. She was standing on one side of the DJ booth; on the other, there was a similarly airbrushed portrait of the Phantom of the Opera.

Shirt & pants **Bottega Veneta**, shoes **Manolo Blahnik**

[Laughs] This was the party of the season.

[Laughs] This is true. There is video evidence that will come out one day. I was a huge Madonna fan and grew up in New York City. Luckily for me, my parents and I shared a love of culture, specifically a love for musical theatre. We didn’t necessarily get the most expensive seats—we weren’t rich—but we got the seats we could afford. This was the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, so MTV was playing on a loop in my apartment. Pop culture always played a big part in my life. I have an older half-brother, but we weren’t raised together. I grew up as an only child in a small apartment in Queens. The entertainment industry was my friend. It was always something I was fascinated by, I wanted to be a part of it.

Did you go to the latest Madonna tour?

Of course, I went twice. My parents took me in 1990 to the Blonde Ambition Tour. I was in the sixth grade, and I sat there with my parents, a little fat, gay Jewish kid voguing in my seat. I was incredibly lucky, I had liberal and accepting parents which was especially rare those days. I benefited from the fact my parents had grown up in New York. My mother had gay friends. They always encouraged me and supported my interest in the performing arts. They took me to Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Bette Midler at Radio City Music Hall. That love and support laid the foundation for my success in entertainment later.

Has your relationship with pop culture changed over the years?

I mean, I’m an adult now so it’s not as idealized anymore. Certain parts of Hollywood that I used to romanticize when I was a child have changed. Some of that comes from having an adult’s perspective, some of it from being part of the industry, and some from just cultural tastes changing. Yet, I’m still such a fan of the entertainers that I love. They hold space in my heart—in my mind, in my life. I rely on their stories and their work even more now that I am a professional going through the ups and downs of show business. I look at their careers and creative choices as blueprints to follow. It remains something that inspires me and comforts me. I was thinking about this recently. Someone told me, “Wow, you’re still such a fan.” A lot of people enter the industry and they get caught up in the game—they forget why they entered it, why they loved it in the first place.

Tank **Bottega Veneta**, pants **Dsquared2**

It’s interesting to hear you say that because so much of your work addresses show business and yet you are very much in it. Do you ever feel any sort of tension in parodying the system you’re a part of?

I do feel conflict sometimes, but I embrace it in my work. I think Billy on the Street is the ultimate example of it. That character was someone I created as an adult but that was inspired by the 12-year-old Hollywood-obsessed version of me blown up in the six-foot-three adult body. I made him up for my live comedy show in New York, way before YouTube or TikTok, way before I found the success he would have. When you’re watching him, you’re both seeing my absolute love and affection for the entertainment industry while I’m satirizing someone who is as emotionally invested as he is in it. I’m always walking that line—somewhere between celebration and satire. I’m satirizing the space it occupies in my mind. It’s a bit complicated, perhaps even hypocritical but I love it. So yes, I feel the conflict and I love it, I embrace it. You can love something to an irrational degree and understand its absurdity but still not be able to help yourself.

Left Sweater & pants **Loro Piana**, shoes **Manolo Blahnik**
Right **Bottega Veneta**

I’m sure it being a character provides you with some protection but still, you are putting yourself in a hard situation to improv in.

I don’t have a hard time anymore thankfully, I’ve been doing it on and off for two decades, it's almost the entirety of my adult life. It’s easy for me to slip into even if doing it is extremely hard. There’s a high level of degree of difficulty in Billy on the Street. We make it look easy and breezy, but I am wandering around the street, sometimes by myself, sometimes with a celebrity guest, a camera guy, and a mic. If you ever came and watched that shoot, it’s challenging. I have to fire on all cylinders because there’s no way to phone it in. He has to operate at such a high level of energy. I’m literally making it all up on the spot. I might have some idea going into it of what the segment is, but more often than not I have the beginning of the conversation and nothing else. For it to be funny, so many things have to fall in the right place. Who knows who’s going to be out on the street that day?

I have circled the block with my friend that’s behind the camera working the nerve to talk to anybody because it is not in my nature to talk to people in that way—the character is not close to me, he’s somewhere in me, but not close. The satire of it is that I heighten my behaviour, that’s where the social commentary comes in. So many times I meet someone who is astounded by the difference between the character and myself. It’s been out for a long time, but people find it every day on TikTok. I now have young people that come up to me that weren’t even born when I started doing it.

Yeah, but it isn’t surprising that Billy on the Street is so viral – the snappy, organic nature of it seems as if it was designed for social media. Of course, you created it before virality was a success mark. Has the dawn of its online success changed the way you think about it?

The metric of social media is just as simple as “Are people watching it?” and “Are people liking it?” That’s what I had always hoped for. But I’ve had many years of viral videos, it’s not the end of the world if something doesn’t [go viral]. I don’t expect every single thing I do to connect in the same way. I just want things to be funny. Whether every single thing is popular in that way doesn’t concern me, but it did at one point. I needed it, it was a huge part of my success. I don’t know if I’d be here talking to you without it. Social media allowed me to sneak around the gatekeepers. When I started it was a different time in culture. There weren’t openly gay actors but, even beyond that, I have always had a unique point of view. When I started, I had execs come to me saying they didn’t know what to do with me, they couldn’t fit me into the Hollywood puzzle.

But defining you is still quite hard. You do improv, you’re a stand-up comedian, you’re an actor, you’re a host. Where do you feel most at home creatively?

First and foremost, I am an actor. That’s what I started as. I went to Northwestern University which has had a lot of great actors come out of it. My first love was acting, and I still think of myself as an actor. Even Billy on the Street, while it’s not acting in the traditional sense, it’s still a character. There are many lessons I learned in acting classes that I’ve applied to it. I mean first rule of acting is listening and reacting in the moment. That’s the name of the game with Billy. I have to drop all preconceived notions of what this person is going to say and drop in, just be in the moment with them. If anyone told me I’d be known as a comedian when I went to school, I would’ve thought you were out of your mind. I was doing Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and scenes from Angels in America. When I was in high school if you had asked me what I’d like to do, I would’ve said, “I just want to do plays in New York,” which is surprisingly one of the few things I haven’t done yet.

Left Shirt & pants **Bottega Veneta**, shoes **Manolo Blahnik**
Right Sweater **Loro Piana**

How does that love for acting manifest when it comes to voice acting? As you reprised your role as Timon in Mufasa: The Lion King, do experiences like that scratch the acting itch?

There may not be physicality involved on screen but, in the recording studio, the character is still in my mind in the same way. Especially for this, because we established Timon’s character in relation to Pumba, played by Seth Rogen, we come as a duo. And the character does have physicality and, even if it’s not directly mine, the animators do take inspiration from the way we move in the studio. Obviously, he is a small meerkat, and I am a large human man so it's not a one-to-one transfer. Also, improv plays a big part of it. Seth and I are playing off each other as if in a traditional set.

Bros marked such a significant moment in the studio system. It sits as a sign of progress. Do you think the pendulum will swing back?

I love that movie, I’m so proud of that movie. It was a wonderful, glorious, complicated, challenging experience as it was always going to be due to the rare nature of the film. I keep reading that that pendulum will swing, that it’s going to be a much more risk-averse moment in entertainment. I’m hoping the progress we’ve seen that Bros was certainly a part of—but so was Billy on the Street even much sooner—of queer-centric projects doesn’t retreat. In the past 10 years, queer comedy has come along a way. It all felt so overdue but so exciting.

It’s a tricky time for the entertainment industry. We went through a golden age when it came to the amount of movies and TV shows being made at every level. Along with it came opportunities for people who were previously ignored. We have to get ahead of it because there are people out there who think we have to purely do broadly appealing projects. We need to stay in the fight. My hope is that progress keeps going forward.