How Madonna Inspired ‘Billy on the Street’

“I’ve always had to work really hard for it,” Billy Eichner says in his hilarious, moving new audio memoir, Billy on Billy, out May 19. “Proving myself again and again and again… There was always someone out there who thought I was too something or not enough of something else. ‘He’s talking too much. He’s singing too loud. He’s too gay. He’s not gay enough.’” 

The book traces how Eichner overcame gatekeepers’ doubts by repeatedly carving out his own lanes, first making Billy on the Street into a cultural phenomenon, then escaping it to re-embrace his acting roots — eventually starring in, co-writing, and producing the first big-budget gay romantic comedy, 2022’s Bros. Along the way, he took inspiration from Barbra Streisand, Madonna, and his touchingly supportive, mildly eccentric parents, who allowed him to elaborately curate his Forest Hills, Queens, bar mitzvah (theme: Broadway Meets Pop) as if it were “an episode of Young Sheldon directed by Baz Luhrmann.” 

Eichner (who will be promoting the audiobook with an onstage conversation at the 92nd Street Y May 17), jumped on a Zoom with Rolling Stone to talk about Joan Rivers as his fairy godmother, the future of Billy on the Street, and more.

What did you come away knowing about yourself that you didn’t really realize before writing this book?
The book forced me to sit down as a middle-aged man now and look back on my life in a way that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise done. I’ve always been someone who doesn’t look back a lot. I had this wonderful childhood, and I know how loving and supportive my parents were in a broad sense, but I don’t stop and think about it specifically. And the book really forced me to do that.

It came at a point where I needed to be reminded who I really am — as an artist, especially. It put me back in touch with being a child and this pure delight I had watching movies and TV. As you get older, especially when you actually become part of the business, you do get a little hardened, a little cynical. You start thinking strategically. This reminded me what it was like to love it in a pure way. And it allowed me to spend some time in my head with my [late] parents again, which I haven’t done in a really long time.

Until you mentioned it in the book, I never thought about how Billy on the Street relies on your faith in New Yorkers.
It really relies on me having great faith in people, and specifically in New Yorkers, that they will have enough of a sense of humor to understand that this is a bit. I think New Yorkers are really smart. They’re really sophisticated. I’ve always described the show as a love letter to New Yorkers. And I never worry about getting punched. Maybe I’m being naive, but I’ve been doing it a really long time now, and it’s never happened. I just think New Yorkers are too smart for that.

If there’s one thing you make clear in the book, it’s the distance between your real self and the guy from Billy on the Street.
I am not Billy on the Street. I am not my persona. I’m very grateful for it, and of course it completely changed my life in ways I could never have imagined and I am profoundly thankful for. It’s given me a really amazing, magical, unexpected life. At the same time, it’s not who I am. I started out as someone who just loved acting and wanted to be an actor, and took it very seriously. I think I’m in a constant process of trying to get back to that kid who was just in acting class in college doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and Molière and Tony Kushner. Because that’s who I really feel I am inside.

You had qualms about the character of Craig on Parks and Rec trapping you even more in that persona.
I was shocked and so flattered and grateful to get the invitation from Mike Schur to join a classic sitcom in its final seasons. And I know it came out of Mike and his writers’ love for Billy on the Street. They were early fans of mine. Which is why the character borrows so many elements of that persona. But it was also happening at the same time I was doing Billy on the Street. And then I think there’s a moment where I’m doing Billy on the Street, Parks and Rec, and also Difficult People, where I’m playing another character named Billy who doesn’t shout as much, but who is obsessed with pop culture, and almost every line out of my mouth is a cultural reference. And so there was just a lot of overlap in those three roles and characters going on at the same time.

Which led to more concerns about being typecast.
And of course I loved all of them. I loved doing all of them. I loved all the people involved. But one of the beautiful things about Parks and Rec, and what people love about it, is that the characters are so grounded. Even though it’s a sitcom, they’re grounded. Very relatable, very human in their presentation. My character was a bit more of a one-dimensional cartoon when it started. And I was happy to be there, but I felt a little conflicted about that. And when they invited me back for another season, I called Mike Schur and I said, “I love doing the show. I can’t even believe you want me to stay on the show. But I think if I come back, we need to try to figure out a way to make him seem more of a real human being like the other characters.” And Mike literally said to me, “I knew what you were calling me about before you called.”

I longed to have the richness and the complexity that the other characters had. And maybe it’s on me. Maybe as an actor I was supposed to find that in spite of the fact that all my lines were written in all caps with three exclamation points following every line, which they truly were.

Mike immediately said, “Yes, let’s do that.” And he even invited me to come into the writers’ room and sit with the writers and talk about how we can bring Craig back down to Earth a little bit for the seventh and final season, and I was very thankful for that.

You had a similar conversation with Jon Favreau around The Lion King.
I wanted to make sure that Timon — I know this sounds silly — wasn’t just a cartoon. Even though he is a cartoon. That it wasn’t just Billy on the Street as Timon. When Timon and Pumbaa enter, it’s at a very sad moment in the movie — Mufasa has just died, Simba is alone — and Jon wanted us to come in all guns blazing. I was so worried about that, I said, “Oh, God, Jon, I don’t wanna be shouting.” And he said to me, “We’ll find the levels later. You get to sing ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight,’ and there is vulnerability there. And you’re not gonna be shouting every line, I promise you.”

I was so petrified to have to step into Nathan Lane’s shoes in that role especially. I’ve worshiped Nathan Lane since I saw him in Guys and Dolls on Broadway in 1992. But I always go in wanting to tackle every role as an actor. It’s not about turning every role into Billy on the Street, which would be a terrible mistake.

What was your emotional journey in the aftermath of the underwhelming box-office results for Bros?
It was hard and it was complicated. I’ve never worked harder on anything in my life. I love that movie. I’m really proud of that movie. I wanted to put a confident, complex, thoughtful gay man at the center of a movie, who was very self-possessed and led with his intellect. And I’m proud that we did that.

And of course I wanted as many people to see it as possible. The scope of the release considering the subject matter of the film, and what moviegoing trends were, especially right after Covid, in 2022 — it was admirable and it was bold, but it was a big swing, for sure.

I know there were a lot of moments that meant a lot to you with that film.
Getting to premiere that movie at the Toronto Film Festival for a huge audience that included a lot of LGBTQ folks. Getting to screen that movie in advance at the Castro in San Francisco in front of a lot of gay men and women who, especially those who are middle-aged and up, from my generation and older, they were going out of their minds at that screening. I will never forget it. I’m getting emotional.

And people come up to me all the time [about this movie], to a degree that I’m really shocked at. It just happened a week ago at a gay bar here in New York. A younger gay man came up to me and said, in his words, “I really loved your gay movie.” Which is funny ’cause he’s gay. He said, “It made me really feel seen.” I have those kinds of interactions about Bros all the time. Those might not have been in the headlines, but they mean a great deal to me.

You skipped the Met Gala during that shoot because you had to film the next day.
Can you imagine? Yeah. Imagine skipping the Met Gala. They wanted me to co-host the red carpet for Vogue. And I wanted to do it, but I will always put my work first.

In the book you mention that you got a really sweet text from Chris Martin about how he and Dakota Johnson watched the movie at home and loved it.
That text from Chris Martin, who I’ve never met in my entire life — I think that came six months or maybe more after the movie came out, and it just shows you what we keep reading about, which is that people watch movies on their own time now. And movies have a completely different shelf life than when I used to run to the movie theater with my parents every Saturday night, literally every Saturday night, as a kid. It’s just different now. People watch things when they watch things. It’s three months later, it’s six months later.

How do you see your post-Bros future currently?
I’m trying to get back to who I really am, and that doesn’t mean saying goodbye to Billy on the Street forever. I know the people who love it really love it, and I wanna make people happy. People come up to me all the time or write to me and tell me how much joy Billy on the Street has brought them. I’m always floored by it because it’s such a silly, ridiculous show, and people tell me that it got them through all kinds of hard times in their life. And I’m just very truly humbled by that. I wanna honor that.

So I love Billy on the Street, and I like doing it occasionally. But the most satisfying creative life would be one that is eclectic and multifaceted. I want to make sure I’m satisfying that part of myself that is an actor and not a persona. And if that happens in small productions off-Broadway, I would love that. I thought I was just gonna do off-Broadway plays my whole life, and had I done off-Broadway plays my whole life, as long as I could make ends meet financially, I would’ve been the happiest person you would’ve ever seen. For me, the theater is the pinnacle of acting, really.

I’ve often had to create my own opportunities, from Billy on the Street to Bros to this book. I do a lot of self-generating, as they say, because I’ve always had to. It’s funny, it’s like I created this lane for myself, and now it’s time to move into another one.

Tell me about Joan Rivers as your fairy godmother.
This was around 2008, 2009. I was doing my live show in New York and had some funny videos online, but no one knew what to do with me. Very powerful people in Hollywood were always telling me, “You’re brilliant. You’re a genius. You’re so funny.” And then I couldn’t get three lines on Law & Order. My father, in his very funny New York accent, used to say, “If you’re such a genius, why can’t you get three lines on Law & Order?” He was literally asking the question. Like, if The New York Times is writing all these great things about you, why are you so broke and severely unemployed at the same exact time? As I say in the book, buzz don’t pay the bills. You need a job. And I was willing to do anything. I had agents and managers — they sign me, they drop me, they sign me, they drop me, because I wasn’t getting work.

I reached out to Joan at a moment that I was — I’m not being melodramatic here — I was seriously considering quitting the business. Even my dad, at that point, who had been the most supportive father anyone’s ever had, was starting to worry about me, and for good reason.

What was that meeting like?
She used to do a weekly stand-up show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in the basement of the West Bank Cafe on 42nd Street. I went to see her weekly stand-up show, and then she took me to dinner at the West Bank Cafe, which is right above the theater. She said, “How many years have you been doing this?” I said 10 years. And she said, “OK, it took me seven years to get on The Tonight Show.” She said, “I needed Johnny Carson to give me his stamp of approval. Because if you got his stamp of approval, then people who might have been scared of you, or you’re loud, or you’re too New York, or you’re too gay — all of a sudden they start to come around.”

She said, “All you need is someone to come and pick you up and put you in the right thing. I saw Billy Crystal come up, and Robin Williams, and Howie Mandel when they were young. When I saw them, I knew they would make it.” And she said, “I think you’ve got the chops, too. You just have to hold on a little while longer, and it’s gonna happen.”

And that was Joan Rivers. We were both New Yorkers, and we were loud, and we talked about pop culture, and we were irreverent. And I think she recognized something of herself in me.

And Joan helped win over your dad, right?
I went home that night and I called my dad, ’cause he was starting to panic. My dad was in the Korean War. He was much older than my mother, so he was Joan Rivers’ generation. He’d grown up with Joan Rivers. And I said to him, “Dad, I just saw Joan, and she said she really thinks I should stick with it a little bit longer. She thinks it’s gonna happen for me.” And my dad looked down very reverently, and in spite of all his fears at that point, he said, “Well, if Joan says it, that’s what you gotta do.”

And I did hold on. She was so encouraging. People used to ask me, “Is Joan Rivers your grandmother?” They would sincerely ask me that, and she wasn’t. She just believed in me when no one else saw it, and when no one even really knew who I was.

And then she gave you a shot on Fashion Police?
She forced the producers to let me film a Billy on the Street segment for it. This is before I had my own show. They didn’t really want me. They didn’t know who I was, and she forced them to let me film this segment, and they did put it in the pilot. They cut it down to smithereens. It was like they were just trying to appease her because she was the star of the show. Then the show was picked up and became a big hit, but I was never in it again.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t someone who came along and picked me up and put me in the right thing. I picked myself up and put me in the right thing. No one cast me on Billy on the Street. I always say, if I needed to audition for Billy on the Street, on the off chance someone else created that show and was just looking to cast the role, I wouldn’t have gotten it. So I picked myself up and I put myself in the right thing. But Joan truly was a hugely influential and encouraging figure in my life, especially when I needed it most.

Tell me about Madonna as an influence on your attitude towards art and life.
No one’s been a bigger influence, which is so funny because we do such different things. I am not a pop star. Her message was always one of defiance. I think that’s Madonna’s ultimate message. “Don’t tell me to stop.” And… [chokes up]… Oh, man, this book, I’m sorry. It makes me emotional to talk about it. I’m crying about Madonna. Happy Pride, everyone.

Her work taught me from a young age, even before I was probably completely conscious of the fact that I was gay, that gay men were cool — because she was the coolest person on the planet, and she surrounded herself unapologetically, defiantly, with out, gay men. Jean Paul Gaultier, her brother Christopher Ciccone, all the dancers that you see in Truth or Dare. That sent me the message that being gay was hardly anything to be ashamed of. In fact, it actually looked really fucking cool and exciting. Why would you wanna be anything else?

And your interest in Madonna was one of the many things your parents supported.
My Aunt Joyce said, “You’re taking him to see Madonna? Why are you taking him to see Madonna?” And before I could even open my mouth to defend Madonna, my father, my straight dad in the late Eighties, said, “She’s a great performer.” And just shut my Aunt Joyce down. Because he actually had good taste and knew Madonna was, in fact, a great performer. But he also knew how much she meant to me.

So at a very impressionable age, Madonna instilled this defiant streak in me, which I think you can actually see in a lot of my work, from Billy on the Street to Bros, even. I didn’t want my character in Bros to walk on eggshells around being gay. The first thing I said to [co-writer and director] Nick Stoller when we started working on this movie was, “I don’t really know what this movie’s gonna be about, but no one’s gonna be tortured and in the closet.”

And I think you can really trace that back to me watching Truth or Dare with my parents at the Chelsea movie theater on 23rd Street. We went on Mother’s Day weekend 1991, and I sat in between my parents watching gay men, who were Madonna’s dancers, make out with each other on a big screen, and I was 13 or 14 years old. And there was one Belgian dancer — he was beautiful and sexy and so talented, and in my head I remember being drawn to him, just silently thinking, “That guy’s hot.” And then when the movie ended, my parents and I stood up, and my mother looked at me and said, “That Belgian dancer, he is so handsome.”

Madonna was the mechanism. I think my parents saw my love of that and said, “Oh, this is who he is. He wants to be part of that world.” And they made the choice to do everything they could to allow me to one day be part of that world.