Exclusive: Billy Eichner Is Ready to Return to His Theater Roots
Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir is now available from Macmillan Audio.
It’s more than a little surprising that Billy Eichner has never performed on a Broadway stage. Like the din of city traffic, an oversized slice of pizza, or the ever-present revival of Chicago, the actor and comedian seems inseparably linked to New York culture and, by extension, its theater scene. This is understandable, given that his famous creation, Billy on the Street, spent years roaming the streets of Manhattan. There, Eichner, could be found asking pop culture questions to many an unsuspecting bystander, including references to current Broadway productions.
And there’s the fact that Eichner himself is also a New Yorker. Growing up in Queens, he was only a stone’s throw away from Manhattan, though, as he tells it, even that felt too far at the time. In his new memoir, “Billy on Billy,” Eichner aims to return to that childlike wonder and appreciation for the art and artists that made such an impact on him at a young age.
“I think what the memoir forced me to do [was] to sit down and think about my childhood and the movies and the musicals and the pop singers and the actors that I loved as a child,” Eichner tells BroadwayWorld. He shares this pop culture obsession with his brash, flippant persona, who became responsible for such viral moments as “Name a woman” or the priceless reaction he received from one New Yorker after pushing her a bit too hard about Emma Stone’s Oscar chances.
But Eichner is so much more than this one character, as demonstrated by his sometimes wry, yet genuinely heartfelt narration of his new memoir. Despite a push from the publisher, the “book” is not available in print, which is by design. “I saw this as an opportunity to use my real voice and not use my ‘Billy on the Street’ voice,” says Eichner. “That was a big driving force for me behind writing the book in the first place: I want to show people the real me because I am very much not ‘Billy on the Street.’”
Eichner reiterates his love for the character (he is his creation, after all), but, nearly a decade after the end of the show's original run, he believes it’s time for audiences to get to know his authentic self. “I think you reach a point in your life when you want people to see who you really are. I didn't want people to inadvertently hear these… stories about my parents and my childhood and my love for entertainment and Broadway through my loud “Billy on the Street” voice. I wanted them to hear the real me.”
Indeed, the real Billy is on full display here. In some passages, we hear his voice break, particularly when he recalls the never-ending support from his parents, who both passed away before seeing him at his height of Billy on the Street fame. Other times, he performs samples of original songs to offer better context for his listeners. Eichner himself also loves other audiobooks from cultural icons, citing the audiobooks by Barbra Streisand and Mariah Carey as two particular favorites.
As Eichner freely admits, his “type” as an actor doesn’t exactly fit into one neat box, and neither do his tastes. A lifelong pop culture connoisseur, Eichner's childhood media diet was eclectic, with film and television interests that ranged from highbrow and queer indie cinema to mainstream Hollywood blockbusters and MTV. But, in true New York fashion, there was also a love of theater and Broadway. In the 1980s, he grew up attending shows with his parents, who only fed his deep appreciation for this and other art forms and those who help create them.
“That love you have for entertainers as a child: it's so pure. And [as] you get older, you get more jaded, you get more calloused, a little more cynical, especially for me because I'm in the industry. All of a sudden, it starts to become a business and you have to work hard to maintain that,” he shares. As a kid, Eichner consumed entertainment news, “reading everything from Page Six in the New York Post to The Village Voice and The New Yorker and Variety. When I discovered Variety as a kid, it was a mind-blowing moment because we didn't have the internet.”
Years before roaming the streets of New York for his show, Eichner’s college days were filled with acting projects quite different from the brash persona for which he came to be known. During that time, Eichner could be found performing works by Chekhov, Shakespeare and Moliere, as well as musicals from William Finn and Sondheim. It was while improvising in a college production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum that Eichner began to notice his flair for comedy.
“Sometimes [the jokes] that I threw in or my little ad-libs would get bigger laughs than some of the scripted lines. And so I knew that, in my head, even though I was trying to be a serious actor, I had this skill. I didn't exactly know how to apply it.” But it wasn’t until after graduation from Northwestern University that he fully committed to comedy.
“I would just go to these equity open calls all the time for everything [and] I never, ever, ever got cast. I couldn't get an agent, I couldn't get a manager, I couldn't get anything,” he shares, specifically recalling a pivotal moment during an open call for Forbidden Broadway, when he decided it was time to try a different approach.
“I remember thinking, ‘A lot of them are really good looking. I bet a lot of them are great singers… I bet a lot of them are really talented. But how many of us are going to make it practically speaking?’... And so that day in line, it was kind of a revelation. I said, ‘I've got to be more strategic than this…’ And so that's when I thought, ‘Okay, I'm funny. Not everyone’s funny; that’s a rare kind of skill to have.’”
With this newfound direction, Eichner decided to pursue comedy full stop, practicing standup and enrolling in improv classes at Upright Citizens Brigade. With these tools and his theater training, Eichner created a live stage show alongside friend and collaborator Robin Lord Taylor. “Creation Nation was a very theatrical show. It was some sort of hybrid between the comedy world and the theater world,” he explains. To get the show off the ground, Eichner and Taylor would need a performance space, leading them to connect with two young theater artists who would later become responsible for Broadway’s Hamilton.
“A friend of mine was renting office space and sharing it with Thomas Kail. At the time, [it] was him and Lin-Manuel [Miranda] and their whole crew from college. They were running the black box theater that was in the basement of the old Drama Bookshop and it was called the Arthur Seelen Theatre… My friend said to Tommy Kail, ‘Do you mind if my friend Billy uses the theater one night to try out his comedy show?’ They let us use that little black box theater and that became the show where eventually I ended up organically developing what became the 'Billy on the Street' persona…”
Creation Nation ultimately found its home at Ars Nova, a performance space that proved a natural fit for Eichner’s variety show, which was a mix of comedy sketches, celebrity interviews, and video segments. “We had a lot of success there, and that really launched my career, although it would take many years after that to get to TV. But that was the beginning of me. I finally got an agent, I got a manager, we got some good press in New York and that was the beginning of me thinking, ‘Okay, this might work out.’
And work out it did. After five successful seasons of the Billy on the Street television series, Eichner has continued to accrue a set of credits as varied as his media tastes. He plays Timon in Disney’s two Lion King reimaginings, voicing the iconic meerkat originated by Eichner’s hero Nathan Lane. He has appeared in several projects in the Ryan Murphy multiverse. He co-wrote and starred in the boundary-pushing queer rom-com Bros. Now, with a memoir under his belt, he looks forward to the chance to return to his theater origins.
“Billy on the Street can certainly be part of my life, but that persona, that character, which I've also done variations on in other projects— it can't be the only part of my creative life. I think if that happened, I would look back and feel disappointed. And so that kid, that teenager, that acting class student in college who loved all different genres and performed them and worked on them, this was a reminder to me that that's the type of artist I want to be and to continue trying to become that,” says the actor.
“Broadway is such a big part of my upbringing. I haven't gotten to do it yet. Hopefully one day, but I'm really a theater person at heart."
Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir is now available from Macmillan Audio.
Photo Credit: Bruce Glikas
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