The Man Behind the Mic: Billy Eichner Comes to the Streets of LA

Billy Eichner is in Los Angeles Thursday night for one night only. But if you don’t have a ticket, keep reading — because this is really about the man, the memoir, and why Billy Eichner might be one of the more underrated talents working today.

His audio memoir, “Billy on Billy,” is out now through Macmillan Audio and available exclusively on audio across Audible, Apple Books, Spotify, and other major platforms. You can also still grab tickets to see him in Provincetown, Chicago, and D.C. 

The Man Behind the Mic

Anyone who has paid attention knows Billy Eichner has always been more than the guy screaming at strangers on 57th Street. He describes his sensibility as “equal parts Streisand and SummerSlam.” One of the more iconic moments in queer comedy came when Billy charged onto the field after Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, microphone in hand, to interrogate members of the victorious New York Giants about Madonna’s halftime show. It made it on Conan. It was the New York alt-cabaret scene imposing its will on the most mainstream, macho cultural event of the year.

Eichner grew up in Forest Hills, Queens — a showtunes-obsessed kid who kept a personal journal of his Oscar predictions, curated his own bar mitzvah around a Broadway Meets Pop theme, and described the result as an episode of Young Sheldon directed by Baz Luhrmann. He studied theater at Northwestern. Joan Rivers was his fairy godmother — the first standup he ever saw. His parents, Jay and Debbie, were devoted. “I am very much a product of my parents’ love,” he said. “The book is chock full of stories about how they supported me and always let me be me — even when maybe they were confused by the intensity of my passion for entertainment.” It would seem Eichner was destined for show biz and Jay and Debbie somehow knew it too.

A Love Letter to His Parents

He lost his mother to a heart attack when he was 20. His father died in 2011, just before “Billy on the Street” broke through. Neither of them got to witness his success. That’s a deep pain all orphans carry. One that only those of us in the club can truly understand. 

The memoir looks back on all of it — the pop culture-obsessed childhood in Queens, the route from Northwestern to breaking out via short videos of yelling at strangers, the making of “Bros,” and the years that followed. There’s a story in the book about standing in line for “Six Degrees of Separation” in 1993 with his mother, who struck up a conversation with a stranger whose daughter was a segment producer at Good Morning America. The woman said her daughter didn’t make a lot of money but loved the lifestyle. His father muttered it under his breath hours later on the drive home, rolling his eyes. It did not seem ridiculous to Eichner.

He says he chose audio-only deliberately. “What excited me,” he said, “was that people could listen to my real voice and not my ‘Billy on the Street’ voice, and hear that I am a multidimensional, grounded, vulnerable, normal human being.” Writing it meant getting reacquainted with something he’d lost. “You get jaded,” he said. “It becomes about career moves and strategy. I always had a critical eye, but it was also romantic, my relationship to culture, and I’ve lost that a little bit, unfortunately, because you grow up, and life is complicated.” He started crying at a recent event talking about his parents and the audience went “awww.” He told them to shut up. It got a big laugh. Kirkus called it “an immensely entertaining tribute to love and resilience.”

Bros Was Always a Classic

Then there’s “Bros.” It deserves a second look from anyone who filed it under just a gay flick and moved on. If you haven’t seen it you’re missing a classic. Seriously, it’s a damn good movie — brilliantly funny, sharp, even pithy — and genuinely romantic, built on the bones of a classic rom-com because that’s exactly what it is. The gay part isn’t the point. The movie is the point. The gay just allows for the comedy gold spun throughout. Billy talks about how gay men come up to him and pour their hearts out about what it meant to them. “The things they say are not the types of things anyone would say about ‘Billy on the Street,'” he said. He’s been honest about what the box office disappointment cost him. “There was so much hype and buildup and it was such a big part of my life for years,” he told the New York Times. “When the dreamy scenario didn’t happen, it took a lot out of me. It’s very personal. I’m not just out there like winging it.” It almost felt like the end of a romantic relationship, he said. It took years to want to write again. 

More to Come

The Joan Rivers piece of this matters. In the memoir he writes about watching the documentary “A Piece of Work,” in which Rivers — globally iconic, in her 70s — breaks down crying because no one takes her seriously as an actress. “I heard Joan say that,” Eichner said, “and thought: I don’t want to let that happen to me. I’d rather sacrifice money and fame and whatever I might lose by not doing ‘Billy on the Street’ all the time in order to give myself the bandwidth to be the artist I want to be.” He’s since moved back to New York from Los Angeles. He played Ned Weeks in a reading of “The Normal Heart” directed by Tony Kushner. He’s filming a comedy with Will Ferrell and Zac Efron. He’s working on a film about Paul Lynde — the gay performer famous for “Hollywood Squares” — and told the Times he finally cracked his take last year. “I came up with something that I’m really excited about,” he said. “So I’m diving back in again.”

Never Say Never

As for “Billy on the Street” — he’s open to it. “The people who get it, it’s like their favorite thing,” he told Deadline. “And they’re always: ‘Please do more. Please bring the show back. The world is so awful. Please do this.’ And I am very touched by that.” But he knows what he wants. “I want to have a more eclectic career,” he said. “I’ve often had to create my own opportunities — from Billy on the Street to Bros to this book. It’s like I created this lane for myself, and now it’s time to move into another one.”

Billy Eichner is one of the most original comic voices of his generation. A comedian who built his career by refusing to fit into anyone else’s category, who made a classic rom-com that Hollywood didn’t know it was ready for, who cried onstage about his parents and then told the audience to shut up. Thursday night he’s at Dynasty Typewriter, 196 seats, the night before Pride Weekend. The show is sold out. No surprise. The weekend will be loud and beautiful and enormous. But 196 people are going to be in a room with one of the funniest, most fearless writers working — and he’s finally, after all of it, ready to tell you who he actually is.

It’s a damn good thing Billy’s got his groove back. He’s a titan of talent and this town needs more of what he’s got to offer. The good news: I suspect the best is yet to come.