Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris Billy Eichner On: White-Knuckling Through Life, Hollywood Bulls**t, and the Two Pieces of Advice That Changed Everything About this episode A hilarious chat about therapy, doomscrolling, being typecast in your own life, and finding yourself in middle age.
Actor, comedian, writer, and producer Billy Eichner burst onto the scene in 2011 with Billy on the Street https://www.youtube.com/user/billyonthestreettv, a satirical TV game show he created and starred in, where Billy walked the streets of New York City asking people to compete in pop culture trivia challenges. The show has not only become a dominant force on social media with hundreds of millions of views but remains one of the most beloved and respected comedy acts in the industry.
In this episode we talk about:
Why Billy refuses to call his memoir a self-help book His complicated relationship with meditation Why he only started therapy in his early 40s Acting class as accidental therapy The real Billy vs. the Billy on the Street character How his parents shaped his confidence and career A bar mitzvah breakdown and his mom's advice And much more Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership
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Additional Resources:
Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir https://read.macmillan.com/lp/billy-on-billy-audio-memoir-9781250439642/?utm_source=Google%20Max&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=billyonbilly-google%20max&utm_id=9781250439642&utm_term=genretargets&utm_content=static&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23853934287&gbraid=0AAAAArEhehflC7VIth9ZCBjv6mkSO41gz&gclid=CjwKCAjwt7XQBhBkEiwAtStpp9K0dApVSkdR3m0RjRtWmA0SQUiyQsfxmBv6Vd3t79z613CVZe5yHhoC4EkQAvD_BwE
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Transcript 10,673 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Dan Harris? Hey, welcome to the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today, we're talking to Billy Eichner, who you probably know from Billy on the Street, Parks and Rec, Bros. He's out with a new audio memoir. It's called Billy on Billy. Billy Eichner, right after this break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. If you haven't already checked out my new-ish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris, I would love for you to do so. Many people fall prey to the myth that taking care of yourself is somehow self-indulgent. One of the big aims of this app is to disprove that, to make the argument that actually taking care of yourself is a public service. As I sometimes say, there's a geopolitical case for you to get
0:48 Dan Harris? your shit together, because it unlocks an upward spiral. The more you work with your own mind, the more you train your mind, the better you will be in your relationships with anybody who crosses your path. And that in turn will make you even happier, and then your relationships will improve even further, and up you go. The whole point of this app is to walk you through the unlocking of this upward spiral. If you sign up, you'll get ad-free versions of this podcast, you'll get a growing library of meditations from many of the world's greatest teachers, a growing library of courses from many of those same teachers, and we do weekly live video sessions where we meditate together. It's a chance
1:30 Dan Harris? for you to be able to ask your questions of me and many of our teachers as well. The idea there being that habit change, science, the research into what it takes to form and maintain habits, shows that social support, in other words, doing it in the carpool lane is a great way to boot up and maintain a habit. I know I said a lot, but I do hope you'll come check it out. You can sign up at danharris.com. Again, that's danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you spend any money. We'll be right back after this.
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3:04 Dan Harris? Billy Eichner, welcome to the show.
3:06 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me.
3:07 Dan Harris? I'm very excited to talk to you.
3:08 Speaker 04 Very excited to talk to you.
3:10 Dan Harris? Let me quote you back to you.
3:11 Speaker 04 Oh, God.
3:12 Dan Harris? This is from the book, which again is called Billy on Billy. "Before we begin," so this is from the preface, "before we begin, I want to be clear about something. This book will not help you. I'm not a self-help gay." Say more.
3:26 Speaker 04 Well, I say a lot more in the book, Dan. That was one of the earliest things I wrote, actually, for the book. I think before I even knew what the rest of the book was gonna be, that's almost like a stand-up, kind of stand-up comedy rant that came out of my brain because, like everyone, I spend way too much time on social media and on Instagram in particular. And then in the past few years, it just feels like everyone has decided that they are a self-help guru with a lot of advice to share. And, and look, I'm not saying some of it-
4:01 Dan Harris? Did I take this as a personal attack?
4:02 Speaker 04 No, no, no, no, because you're, you're, you're an intelligent person and you have the chops. You know, we know what your background is, right? Some of these people are just were sitting in their house one day and decided, I know what I'm gonna do. Tell some, tell everyone else how to live their lives, even though I haven't had a job for 30 years. You know what I mean? I know, I'm sure some of them are lovely people. And again, it's not that all the advice is bad. I take some of the advice sometimes. Sometimes I'll see something and say, you know what? I'm gonna try that. Like, yeah, my morning routine is horrible. So let me try that. But there is just so much of it now. And you don't know who these people are.
4:44 Speaker 04 And it's like, do you have a degree? Are you a real therapist? How am I to know whether to trust you or not? Like, you read someone else's book and now you're telling me what they had to say? You just don't know. There's no context for their level of authority. And yet, there's so much of it. It's an avalanche of self-help. And so I just wanted people to know in my book, right off the bat, that, like I say in my book, if your parents hated you, this book will not change that.
5:17 Speaker 04 There's, you know, I'm telling you my story. I, now, I will say, I've had people who have listened to the book who've said, you know, Billy, it actually is a helpful book, and it is an inspiring book. So on some level, I'm just being funny when I say that. But yeah, there's a lot of self-help out there, and you've got to pick and choose who to listen to.
5:36 Dan Harris? I agree. And I do want to say, the book, there are some quite helpful things in the book that I'm gonna get to shortly. The fact, though, that the algorithm is serving up a lot of self-help content to you, kind of does say something about you, because the
5:53 Speaker 04 That I'm looking at it.
5:53 Dan Harris? Yes, well, that you were looking for it.
5:56 Speaker 04 Right. I know. Well, it's not that I'm not as depressed as everyone else. It's just that I'm overwhelmed by the amount of advice.
6:06 Dan Harris? Yeah.
6:06 Speaker 04 You know, and I have a real therapist in real life, and I'm, and now people are going to ChatGPT and all of these other uh, smart bot apps, whatever you call them, um, to like, ask for more advice. And it's just, it's just a lot of advice. And I think at some point, you have to say to yourself, and by the way, I do this with myself, because like you're saying, I'm being served this because I'm looking at it. But I need to take a moment, I need to check myself and say, all right. Shut the fuck up and actually go do something with all this advice. Because if all I'm doing is sitting there taking advice, it's like, this is not productive.
6:45 Dan Harris? Fair enough.
6:46 Speaker 04 And it becomes narcissistic in a way.
6:48 Dan Harris? Yes.
6:48 Speaker 04 You know what I mean?
6:49 Dan Harris? It's just navel gazing.
6:49 Speaker 04 Exactly.
6:50 Dan Harris? You asked me before the interview to keep an eye on your posture.
6:53 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. Oh, okay. Thank you.
6:55 Dan Harris? Yeah.
6:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, my posture becomes terrible in these interviews and then, you know, I go on YouTube and I look like a hunchback or something. You know, no offense to hunchbacks. Don't, I don't want the hunchback community to cancel me.
7:08 Dan Harris? Don't at me.
7:08 Speaker 04 You know, but yes, thank you for reminding me to have good posture.
7:12 Dan Harris? I'll keep an eye on it for I got your back. You do, however, and this, this hits close to home for me. In the preface to the book, you do take some pot shots at my business, which is meditation. I'm going to quote you back to you again.
7:26 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
7:26 Dan Harris? I don't know. I don't know about you, but if it gets to the point that someone is telling me, I just need to calm down and focus on my breathing of all mundane things, I know that something in my life must have gone terribly wrong. Meditation is, I mean, it's just so sad. What's your beef?
7:43 Speaker 04 Okay, first of all, I love meditation. I support anything that helps anyone get through the day. We're living in a very hard time. I will say I have tried meditation and sometimes it does work and it calms me down. I will say that I'm not anti meditation, but something happens in my brain, probably because I haven't meditated long enough, to be honest. And I don't exactly know how to do it, where I know that because meditation has not been a daily practice for me. Like, I don't meditate when things are going well and when things are not going well. I only choose to do it when I'm stressed out.
8:23 Speaker 04 And if I do that, the act alone of sitting there in my living room and listening to some meditation app and breathing in, breathing out. There's a voice in my head that said, if you were happy, you wouldn't need to do this. You're only meditating because something has gone terribly wrong. So in a way, the meditation itself is a reminder. Of why I'm stressed to begin with. And so, but again, it's because I haven't done it enough. And I probably don't really understand how to do it.
8:54 Dan Harris? So the problem isn't that every time you sit down to meditate, you're bombarded by too many random thoughts. The problem is that there's one very salient thought that comes up in your mind when you're meditating, which is you're only doing this because you're so fucked up right now.
9:07 Speaker 04 That's right. You're disappointed. You have anxiety. You're depressed about something. So the meditation itself in a way becomes a reminder that that's the case. And that's why I'm sitting there in the first place. Because if I was happy, I'd just be bounding out the door to get my coffee and taking a walk and listening to my music and, you know, having a gay all time, you know, which is what I would prefer to do rather than sit there and kind of be reminded that I'm disappointed about something.
9:35 Dan Harris? You consistently see a shrink, though. And so I'm assuming.
9:39 Speaker 04 Yes, I do.
9:40 Dan Harris? And you made a reference to it. So you don't have the same problem with a therapist, meaning the fact that you're sitting down for therapy doesn't signal to you that there's an acute problem and you're only doing it for that. So I'm wondering whether meditation, I'm not pushing meditation on you, but I think for me, meditation has been helpful as something to do consistently in good times and bad.
10:04 Speaker 04 Right.
10:04 Dan Harris? So I'm not teaching my brain, oh, if you're doing this, you've just made a big mistake.
10:09 Speaker 04 Totally. And I love my therapist and I love therapy. And I only started going to a therapist in my early 40s. And now I can't believe I didn't go to one my entire life. It's crazy. I lost my parents. I didn't go to a therapist. And I never really had, I think if I had had some event in my life that really brought me down, I would have sought out therapy. I never felt any shame about it. I talk in the book about how I begged my mother to go to therapy because she had what I consider to be a substance abuse problem that ultimately, in my mind, brought on the heart attack that ended up killing her. So I begged her when I was in college to go to a therapist because I'll tell you this,
10:54 Speaker 04 though, I never went to a therapist, but. I went to acting school and I had an amazing acting teacher. An acting class is not a substitute for therapy, but has therapy-like elements to it. It forces you to be honest with yourself and to let your guard down. You have to be to be a good actor. And I had an amazing acting teacher at Northwestern, who I, there's a whole chapter about her in my book. Her name is Mary Poole. And I came into Northwestern as this native New York kid, kind of a know-it-all, really wanted to be a good actor, but also had this kind of like smart aleck-y energy about me. Could you imagine? Based on my work.
11:34 Speaker 04 But, but, you know, but now that's a put on. That's part of my performance. When I was a teenager, you know, I was like, I was a teenager coming from New York City and I had kind of an attitude. And she really cracked me open and had me get rid of all that nonsense, all that. I wouldn't call it affectation, just attitude, you know? And that was therapeutic in a way. And to be able to act means to have to let your guard down in front of millions of people sometimes. You know, you have to be in touch with your vulnerability. You can't be scared of it. And you have, acting is all about getting to the truth of the matter. And so is therapy, I think, right? So in that way, that was therapeutic for me.
12:17 Speaker 04 But it wasn't until later in my life that I got an actual therapist. And I love therapy.
12:22 Dan Harris? You talked about your act. And I'm sure you hear this all the time. We've never met before today and I'm, I was immediately struck, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised, by how different you are from Billy on the street or Billy who shows up in Parks and Rec.
12:37 Speaker 04 That's right. And that's a big reason why I wrote the book. And I think this, I say this in the prologue too, or maybe at the beginning of the first chapter. I love Billy on the street. I created it. It gave me an amazing life. I love that character. I love how much people love the character. Every day, there's people on social media begging me to do it more and do it again. And that moves me. That's very, that's incredible. It's why I'm sitting here talking to you. Let's be honest. It's why I get to write a book.
13:03 Dan Harris? Yeah.
13:04 Speaker 04 But. It's not the real me. And I think you get to an age, I did my first Billy on the Street video for my stage show. I had a live sketch comedy show in New York, started in 2003. And the first video I made, YouTube wasn't even around. We made this video to project on a screen in the theater we were playing in. I went around and talked to people on the street and my friend Jamie, who was directing the show, we had gone to Northwestern together, he helped me edit the video and we projected it onto a screen. And I had been developing this persona, this high intensity persona, this guy for whom pop culture, the stakes were just so high for him when it came to pop culture topics. And I had been developing that persona onstage.
13:48 Speaker 04 And then we, we did this segment on the street where I kind of did the, did that character, but made people deal with me. And from the second we showed it, the audience fell apart laughing. That was in September 2004. Then YouTube comes along, the videos start to go viral, I get a TV show in 2011, that takes off. And then everything kind of snowballed after that. So that's a character though, that I created when I was 25 years old. And I'm 47 and people are still asking me to do it all the time, which occasionally I'm happy to do, but you also get to a point, I think, at this stage of life where you want people to know that you're a real person, you know?
14:33 Speaker 04 And I have had a handful of acting opportunities where I got to play different types of characters and more multi-dimensional people that seemed more grounded and more human and more relatable. But I'm still mostly known as Billy on the Street. And I, I guess I have a little bit of a complicated relationship with that because I love it and I love the show, but I'm at the point where I want people to know that I'm a real person.
14:59 Dan Harris? So in, in some ways, is the, is the book a career move? In that you, you might get different roles if people have a more holistic view of you?
15:06 Speaker 04 I think maybe partially, yeah. I think it's an emotional move for my own peace of mind to be able to put something out in the world because I think it was starting. Like I said, I'm a very middle aged man at the age of 47. I'm a very adult person and-
15:24 Dan Harris? You have no gray hair?
15:25 Speaker 04 Uh, I have a little gray hair. Um, it gets sprayed out for things like this sometimes, although I like my gray hair. I'm the only person in Hollywood looking forward to looking older because I want to differentiate myself from what came before.
15:40 Dan Harris? I see.
15:40 Speaker 04 You know?
15:41 Dan Harris? Well, that really speaks to the complicated relationship to Billy on the street, that you would want to look different so you're no longer confused with that guy.
15:49 Speaker 04 It's not that cut and dry though, because I, I love that guy. I just consider it one character out of many that I could play. You know, when I was in college, Billy on the street wasn't even, I didn't even know what that was, you know? Um, that idea came along later in my twenties when I was a very serious student in acting class and I said I had this amazing teacher. If you ask the kids at Northwestern who saw me performing, you know, what I was doing, I was doing Chekhov and Shakespeare and, and Angels in America and musicals. I was in the musical theater program and it was so eclectic and I really took it seriously.
16:31 Speaker 04 And I was doing scenes from, you know, Harold Pinter betrayal and, and you know, what you do in acting class, you know? That's the track that I thought I was on. I remember, and I talk about this in the book, my acting teacher sat us down when I was in college and said, what actors? You know, again, this is the late nineties, by the way. So she said, what actors who have big careers now, would you want to emulate? You know, whose career would you want? And I said, Kevin Kline. And again, don't cancel me, Kevin Spacey, who at the time, you know, we didn't know about his personal stuff. He was coming off of American Beauty and the Usual Suspects. And also I grew up in New York City.
17:14 Speaker 04 And what so much of the book is about is about how much theater my parents took me to see. It was, we were middle class people. We were not rich, but what we had, we spent on entertainment and especially we loved the theater. Broadway, off off Broadway, from the time I was a young kid, they treated me like an adult, right? And I was so passionate about it. And the more passionate I got about it, they got about it. And so I was exposed to very sophisticated things for a kid, you know, and that's what made me want to be an actor. It was seeing those plays, you know, there was a whole wave of gay male playwrights in the late eighties and nineties in New York who were sadly using their work to respond to AIDS for the most part. But a side effect
17:59 Speaker 04 of that is that I went as a kid and saw lots of gay male characters on stage in a way that you would not have on TV or in mainstream films at the time. And I could rattle off all those playwrights that inspired me, you know. And so that's who I am underneath the persona. And like I said, I think you just get to a point, I think we all have different sides of ourselves, you know, and you get to a point where you want the world to see that.
18:26 Dan Harris? Yeah, you know, as you're speaking, my head is spinning a little bit, thinking about the fact that this, this impulse on your part is, I think, a universal thing. Like, we all get typecast.
18:38 Speaker 04 That's right.
18:38 Dan Harris? We all, like, we know there is some story that people have about us that they, that they tell behind our backs.
18:47 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
18:47 Dan Harris? Like, we are all in a work context, in a, in our personal lives, like, we're kind of put in a box. And your desire, part of your desire with this book is to, like, break out of that box. And we all want to break out of the box.
19:01 Speaker 04 And I've had some opportunities. I think Bros was a good step in that direction. Um, that's a very complicated, multi-dimensional character that I got to write and, and play in that. Um, I did American Crime Story, where I played Matt Drudge, who created The Drudge Report. Clearly, that's not Billy on the street. That's an entirely different living human being, also a very complicated man. So I think certain people know who've been watching closely. But again, there is one persona that I created that people love that seems to dominate people's image of me. And again, I, I want to be clear that I love that persona. This is about building on that and expanding on that. And also, um,
19:42 Speaker 04 and maybe other people can relate to this regardless of what industry you're in. Sometimes I think, God, I was the most me in college. I was the most authentic version of myself before my career took off, interestingly enough, even though all I wanted was for my career to take off. But now I'm looking back and I'm thinking, oh, I just want to get back to who I am, or at least give it a shot before it's too late.
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21:13 Dan Harris? A question, well, first, a comment and then a question related to Billy on the street, although we're not going to go super deep into it since we've already kind of covered it. But the comment is, if you believe that algorithms are a window into the soul...
21:24 Speaker 04 And I do, Dan.
21:26 Dan Harris? And I do, too. So if your algorithm is saying that you need self-help, mine is saying that I love Billy on the street because your stuff has served up to me all...
21:36 Speaker 04 Oh, I know. A lot of people say that to me. I never know whether to say thank you or apologize, but that does mean a lot to me.
21:43 Dan Harris? It's such a, in some ways, like I have so many resentful feelings about our lives being dominated by these algorithms, but they really do tell you a lot.
21:52 Speaker 04 I guess that's true.
21:53 Dan Harris? Because it's learning about you so that it can hook you. And yeah, I get a lot of Billy on the street, which makes me smile.
22:00 Speaker 04 I get photos of very buff, hairy Ben.
22:05 Speaker 04 And mixed in with interviews with Madonna from 1992.
22:09 Dan Harris? That you're looking for a bear.
22:10 Speaker 04 Good for you, Dan.
22:12 Dan Harris? Yeah, I got a lot of gay friends.
22:12 Speaker 04 Wow, okay, yeah, a certain kind of bear. Yeah, a bear and otter.
22:18 Dan Harris? Oh, I didn't know. What's an otter?
22:19 Speaker 04 Excuse me, how dare you? Dan, no, but I'm proud of you for no- Bears are like another division of otters. Okay, now, when I was growing up, all we knew about were bears, which were kind of big hairy guys. Sometimes they were hairy, sometimes they were just kind of big. Now, of course, in our new world, there are divisions of bears. So you can have an otter. An otter is like a younger bear, maybe more lean than a bear. Kind of like a hairy, lean, athletic guy, I think.
22:49 Dan Harris? So like a twink version of a bear?
22:51 Speaker 04 That's right. Good for you.
22:52 Dan Harris? How am I doing? Am I doing all right?
22:53 Speaker 04 Yes, yeah, twink bear, yeah.
22:55 Dan Harris? Okay.
22:56 Speaker 04 Like a twunk bear or something like that.
22:59 Dan Harris? Let's get back to Billy, and you've referenced this a couple of times. In terms of Billy on the street, the bit is this guy who cares so much about pop culture. The stakes are incredibly high, disproportionately high. But that actually is just a cartoonish or caricature version of you, as I understand it, from preparing to this, for this interview.
23:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think it's a heightened version of who I was as a kid. And to me, Billy on the street really is kind of like a man-child character. You know, one of my biggest influences was Pee-wee Herman. If you grew up in the 80s like I did, I was obsessed with Pee-wee Herman. And if you really think about it, and I talk about the parallels in the book, there are a lot of parallels between the Pee-wee character and the Billy on the street character. They're basically grown-up children being embodied by loud, brash gay men. Billy on the street started out as a way for me to satire my own extreme, over-extreme interest in the entertainment industry, you know?
24:01 Speaker 04 And so I thought, well, what if I play like the most intense version of a guy who is living and breathing pop culture and his opinions about it and theater and all of it, to the point where I force normal people
24:15 Speaker 04 In New York going about their day to stop and talk to me about whatever it is, you know, Kate Winslet's career choices, or the Oscars, or Meryl Streep, sorry, Meryl Streep, or whoever it might be, you know, a pop singer, Madonna, whatever it is.
24:30 Dan Harris? In the book, you talk about the fact that your parents really kind of were, and you referenced this earlier in this conversation, that your parents like aided and abetted this interest.
24:40 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. And so much of the book, for me, the book is mainly a love letter to my parents. Jay and Debbie Eichner, who, this was the 80s and 90s, they knew, I'm pretty sure, that they had a gay kid, even before I came out, it was pretty obvious. And remember, I grew up in New York City, as did they. My mom grew up in Brooklyn, my dad grew up in the Bronx, I grew up in Queens, I went to high school in Manhattan. They had both lived when they were single before I came along in the West Village in the 60s and 70s, which is like the Mecca for gay men at that time. And so, the idea of having a gay child, probably not what they expected, but they were very quick to embrace me. And not only the gay thing,
25:23 Speaker 04 what they were really quick to embrace also is this real passion I had for the performing arts. I was a really good singer as a kid, in like, kind of the old school Broadway way, and I would belt out show tunes in our very small apartment in Queens, and everyone in the building would hear me. And sometimes they would complain that I was singing too loudly, the neighbors. And my parents would kind of roll their eyes and be like, okay, well, we'll tell them to quiet down. And then they wouldn't. You know, and they would applaud. I would sing in the apartment on a Saturday morning, and I would belt along to pop songs at the time, or Barbra Streisand's Broadway album, which was like my introduction to show tunes. And I would be belting out at the top of my lungs,
26:06 Speaker 04 and I was like a five-year-old kid, so I can sing like a woman. I could still sing really high notes. And my father, who spent most of his time loving the Mets and the Yankees and football, and was kind of a more conventional, like, you know, straight guy from the Bronx, he... Loved when I sang. I'm gonna cry. He loved when I sang and he, um, they would applaud in the living room and they always completely leaned in and let me be me. And it is that, you know, whether someone likes my work or not, I would say my success, and I've had a fair amount of success, especially for an unconventional kind of person in, in
26:48 Speaker 04 a very cutthroat industry in Hollywood, like, all of my success can be traced back to the fact that my parents, Jay and Debbie Eichner, their default mode was always to just love the hell out of their kid. And if anyone takes anything away from the book, I, I hope it's that.
27:07 Dan Harris? Taking nothing away from mothers, because mothers are amazing. There is something in my experience, special about a father's love.
27:15 Speaker 04 A father's love, and in 1985, 1988, 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York, by the way, which as a child, I wasn't as cognizant of as my parents probably were. But my mother's boss in high school was a gay man. You know, my parents were adults, they knew about all of that. Even then, my father loved his gay son and all of my very gay interests. And I begged them to see Madonna in concert, and they took me. And I begged them, almost to the point of tears, to get tickets to see Barbra Streisand, and they took me. And they weren't rich, but they used what they had. I was an only child, so I benefited from that. But, and they would take me into the city, and we went to see
28:00 Speaker 04 plays about gay men. And I would sit in between them, and they would not act like this was weird at all. We didn't necessarily sit around and have like a conversation after. It's like, okay, Billy, oh, those were gay people. Do you know what that is? No. They just treated me like an adult. And I, that had an enormous impact on my life, on my confidence, on my work. And I ended up walking into the world with a lot less shame about being gay.
28:34 Speaker 04 Then I think a lot of gay men do, unfortunately. I'm not saying I never had my moments of shame, or you know, we all do. But relative to a lot of people I know and a lot of people I've read about, other gay men, I was just beyond lucky that they loved me so much. It's a remarkable thing.
28:58 Dan Harris? It's beautiful, really is. And honestly, we're all benefiting from it because I wouldn't have you in my feed making me smile all the time if you didn't have the confidence to do what you did with that first big break of yours.
29:10 Speaker 04 That's a very nice way of putting it. Thank you. And, and, and that's why the book is so much about my parents. And the book was such a gift to me. And it forced me to sit down, which I probably wouldn't have done, you know, unless I had a reason to, which was that someone made me an offer and I took it to write a book about my childhood. They didn't say that it had to be about my childhood. All the publisher said was, we want it to be personal. We want it to be nonfiction, to have a memoir-like quality. They said, other than that, it can be a book of essays, it can be whatever you want. And I sat down and I said, what is this gonna be about? And I thought, okay, what is the root of all of this?
29:53 Speaker 04 Why was I able to accomplish all of this? Being gay, not ever being the prettiest person to walk into the audition room. I'm a fine-looking person, but by Hollywood standards, you know? What gave me the chutzpah, as my parents would have said, and my grandparents would have said, what gave me that confidence to kind of blaze through? And I had to sit down and think, well, what was it? And I started thinking about my childhood. I started thinking about all the ways my parents always supported my interest and passion to the best of their ability. Again, even though they weren't wealthy people, when I got into Northwestern, which has
30:37 Speaker 04 a renowned theater program, but is also a very expensive school. And the assumption was, because we were in New York, that I would always go to NYU, which is not a cheap school, but at least would mean I was staying local. And I got into Northwestern and my dad took me to visit Northwestern. And we sat in on an acting class. It was just the two of us. And I turned to him after and I said, I love that acting class so much. That is exactly where I want to be and who I want to be. And he said, okay, we'll make it happen. He said to me, if you want to go there, we'll do what we have to do. And it was financial aid and it was loans and it was student loans for me.
31:21 Speaker 04 I didn't pay back my Northwestern loans until I got Billy on the street on TV when I was 32 years old. But it was always, that was their mentality. And it wasn't a mentality, I think I say in the book. So many other parents would have said, this is a lovely hobby for you. Go get a real job. We don't have the money to like back you up here. But they just didn't feel that way. They always felt like we are going to do whatever it takes to give you a shot. And I talk about this in the book, how my dad, I think he had a little bit of a hang up. My dad was someone who didn't have a lot of money, but would watch CNBC around the clock as if he did. And track the stock market. You know, he was a numbers guy.
32:06 Speaker 04 He was an accountant and I think he maybe had a little bit of a hang up over the fact that he hadn't become a very wealthy man. And he saw that if you have wealth and you have connections, that that really helps your kid make it in Hollywood. And he was determined, determined that just because he didn't have that and we weren't a show business family. He was determined that I would get a shot anyway. And did everything he could to make that happen. And the whole book is a tribute to that.
32:36 Dan Harris? Let me ask you about your mother. You write, and I find this very amusing. In the book, you say that tragically for a memoir writer, you possess, and this is the quote, audiobook only levels of childhood trauma. That being said, there are, there is in particular, one really searing memory where you witnessed the aftermath of a fight they had. Can you talk about that? I think you saw your mother in the kitchen after a fight.
33:03 Speaker 04 Yes. My mom was an incredibly wonderful, sunny person who loved everyone and loved everything. My mom told everyone she loved them within seconds of meeting them. And it wasn't a facade. It wasn't an affectation. This is who she was. She was an incredibly optimistic person. She would tell my dry cleaner she loved him. Whenever we would leave the dry cleaner, she would say, love you, love you, everyone. It became like a catchphrase in her world, you know, "Love you, love you, love you." She would say that to everyone. At the same time, people are complicated and she had this on again, off again addiction to prescription diet pills when I was a kid, which were basically speed in the eighties and nineties.
33:44 Speaker 04 And she also had an underlying heart condition, which leads to her having a heart attack when I was in college, which I talk about in the book. But before that, taking those pills would make her very emotional and a bit more overreactive, right, than she usually was. So it would cause a lot of like fights between her and my dad. And when she wasn't on the pills, they would never fight. And when she was on the pills, she was fighting with everyone. However, if I'm being honest, the pills also allowed her, I think, to express some of the pain she had in a way she couldn't when she was sober, if that makes sense.
34:26 Speaker 04 And so, once, yeah, I witnessed her and my dad having this fight. I don't remember what the fight was about, but my dad was, my dad, as you'll hear in the book, is a very loving man, but stoic, you know? My dad was in the Korean War. He was older than my mom. It's a different generation of, of straight man. And he wasn't as great overtly with the emotional stuff. My mom would always get annoyed with him because he wouldn't show me much physical affection. I didn't care because I could always tell it was so obvious my dad loved me. But she wanted to see, my, my mom, being like a Jewish mother, had like, my God, she
35:09 Speaker 04 was constantly hugging me and kissing and, and everyone. You know, she was like this, uh, just, it was a flood of affection constantly, you know? I say in the book, "My mom's love was like the sphere in Vegas. It was an immersive theatrical experience. It was all over me and under me, you know, at all times." And that was wonderful. My dad was the opposite. He wasn't as physically demonstrative and that would piss her off sometimes. So they had this fight and I witnessed my mom, I must've been 10 or 11 or something like that. And she's standing over the sink by herself when they'd had this fight, but he'd stopped responding to her.
35:50 Speaker 04 And she was saying, she was like, kind of crying to herself. And from my bedroom, I used to like, sit and watch my TV constantly, but there was a door open. I could see her in the kitchen. It was a very small apartment. We lived on top of each other. We heard everything, saw everything.
36:06 Speaker 04 She was crying to herself. She was saying, crying out to my dad, like, can't you see I'm lonely? I'm sad. And he did not respond. And I witnessed that as a kid. And
36:21 Speaker 04 part of me was mad because I, I didn't like when she was on the pills. It would change her personality.
36:27 Speaker 04 But even then, as a kid, maybe gay kids are just smarter. Or maybe because they let me watch so much, like, adult theater and movies. I kind of had an insight into adulthood. I don't know if, maybe, maybe all kids do. I don't know. I was never another kid. But I, I could see her. It was almost like I was watching her as one of these characters in one of these more adult movies I'd watched, like a Woody Allen movie, or, or something a bit more sophisticated, where you were dealing with midlife people in pain or something. And I could tell that the emotions she was expressing were honest. And I had never heard her say that before. And that stuck with me.
37:12 Dan Harris? Maybe it's only audiobook level of trauma, but it is traumatic. I think it can be traumatic for kids to see their parents let their guard down in that way.
37:21 Speaker 04 I felt bad for her. I didn't feel bad for myself. I was always so loved and protected. Even when she was on pills, it's like, none of the antagonisms she would direct on others when she was in that mode was ever directed at me. I guess even in that state, I was still like, the center of her universe, you know? Like, I was always so loved and protected. But I, loving my mother, and we were so, you know, a gay son and his mother. They're gonna be very close. And most of the times, things were phenomenal. I mean, I had this, like, dreamy childhood, you know? But there were, it was punctuated by moments like that.
38:05 Speaker 04 And I just felt bad for her, because I was a kid and I didn't quite know what to do about that. And I, I- But I knew something needed to happen. You know, she was in more pain than she was willing to admit emotionally, which is why 10 years later I get to college and I come home and I try to convince her. I'm desperate to convince her to see a therapist. We didn't talk about mental health as much in those days. And, you know, my mother and a lot of people in that time thought only crazy people go to therapy, you know? And luckily, that's really changed an enormous amount. When my mother did die and it was time for my dad to go to therapy, because obviously
38:50 Speaker 04 that was devastating for him, he went. He went immediately and went on Prozac and it changed his life. He'd never been happier.
38:57 Dan Harris? Wow.
38:58 Speaker 04 Yeah. But she, she didn't want to go. I think there were things she wanted. She was this bright and sunny person and that was not, like I said, that was not an act. But I, I think she was very resistant to openly discussing anything that she didn't feel great about.
39:19 Dan Harris? Yeah, people are complicated.
39:20 Speaker 04 That vulnerability, she didn't want to admit it out loud.
39:23 Dan Harris? It's hard to admit it out loud.
39:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
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40:30 Dan Harris? As you said at the beginning of this conversation, and you say in the beginning of your new audiobook,
40:37 Dan Harris? the book is not supposed to be helpful. And yet, there are two like wisdom bombs that you drop at the end of the book. One from your mom and one from your dad. Let's start with your mom. Maybe you can tell the story of what she said to you at your bar mitzvah when you were freaking out.
40:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I talk about my bar mitzvah party a lot in the book. I, being a young, culture-obsessed gay child, I art-directed my bar mitzvah reception as if it was the friggin Met Gala. I mean, I acted like I was Truman Capote, planning his black and white ball at the Plaza. And as I say in the book, but even more dangerous because my parents loved me. There's nothing more dangerous than a beloved child. But I was so intense about it. And again, my parents let me lead the way. You know, and I had this creative vision for my bar mitzvah party. And I wanted it to be, the theme was Broadway meets pop, because I couldn't decide which one I liked more.
41:37 Speaker 04 So there was a large, life-size portrait of Madonna in her comb bra and garter belt at my bar mitzvah. Right? That was on one side of the DJ booth. And on the other side of the DJ booth was an equally large, spray-painted portrait of the Phantom of the Opera. Right? This was an extremely gay affair, especially for Queens in 1991. All right, Queens, New York, right? We're not in Manhattan here. My parents let me do it. And all the kids' tables were named after pop stars. Mine's was Madonna, of course. All the parents' tables were named after Broadway shows. We had dancers. We really leaned in.
42:19 Speaker 04 And I had this vision that, you know, people were gonna be dancing. And I wanted people dancing during certain parts of the party and people sitting during other parts of the party during the show tunes, so that it would be more adult and sophisticated and it would take you on like an emotional journey. Please, you know, again, I thought I was like putting together like a pop concert here. Right? Or like a Broadway. Show. So I'm looking around and it's kind of the towards the beginning, maybe getting to the middle of my bar mitzvah. And I am freaking out because it doesn't look exactly the way I thought it would look in my mind. And people aren't dancing enough. They're not playing the right songs. I had handed the DJs weeks in advance, a handwritten list of like 300 songs.
43:03 Speaker 04 And at the top of the list, I wrote in a pencil with underlined words, these songs must be played. Which, and that list included like some obscure show tunes that your typical bar mitzvah DJ would not have had on hand. Right? So they weren't playing the right songs and my vision wasn't being seen through. And I ran over to my mother and I basically had a breakdown. And I said, after all my months of planning, like people aren't dancing, they're not playing the right songs. No one's having a good time. And I just panic as this young gay kid who's, you know, artistic dreams seem to be falling apart.
43:44 Speaker 04 Right? In real time. And my mother, who was always so warm and loving, kind of took an unusual for her. Tone. And she kneeled down in a very loving, but pointed way. And she looked at me and said, this party is amazing. Everyone's having a great time. It's just getting started. People are dancing. They're going to be dancing more. She said, please, you have to have a good time. You have to have fun here. Please don't be crazy. You have to have fun. And that really stayed with me, you know, and I, and I think about that too, even now, like decades later, when I'm getting stressed about work or things aren't going right, I, I think about my mom saying that to me.
44:29 Speaker 04 And it's like, please don't be crazy. Everything's amazing. You have to have fun.
44:34 Dan Harris? If we don't remember your mother's advice, we just trudge through life.
44:39 Speaker 04 That's right. Yeah. And I think I've white knuckled it through a lot of things. Now, if my friends heard this, they would say, what are you talking about? You have a lot of fun. You have fun all the time. And I do, I do have fun, but I think part of that is like, my mom having given me that advice, like at such an early age. You know, and I recently, to pull clips to promote my book, I recently watched my bar mitzvah video. Which of course was on VHS because it was 1991 and I had it converted to a digital file, which is so funny. Now my bar mitzvah video is just in my phone. So after not really watching it for decades, I can now look at it every single day. And I was looking at my
45:22 Speaker 04 bar mitzvah video and I, and I had already written the book and talked about how stressed I was at my bar mitzvah and how much it meant to me that it looked exactly the way I wanted it to look, et cetera. And then I rewatched the video and I look stressed out. I look so stressed, you know, and I'm like this fat sweaty Jewish kid, right? And I, it's supposed to be my big day. And it's funny because behind the scenes, I thought I was such a player. You know, I thought I was like, I think I say in the book, I was like, you know, Luca Guadagnino, like, you know, planning the next shot on the set of his new movie. I thought I was like such an artist putting this bar mitzvah together. And then
46:06 Speaker 04 I get there and I'm just, it just doesn't seem like I thought it would seem in my head. And that's really, you can see the pain on my face, right? Which is why my mother leaned over and said that to me. However, my parents are dancing up a storm. They have never looked happier. They are even more than I remember. And it made me so happy to see them like that. I mean, I haven't watched, you know, growing up when I did, we didn't have iPhone cameras. Like, I don't have a lot of my parents on video like that, you know, and they're dancing. You would have thought they were at Studio 54. They don't stop dancing and they are hilarious and they are so funny. And they are having like the time of their
46:49 Speaker 04 lives while their like 13 year old child is like having a nervous breakdown, you know, because like the Madonna portrait doesn't look right. Sorry, what, what was the question?
46:59 Speaker 04 I forget what you said.
47:01 Dan Harris? I was just, I didn't even ask a question. I just said-
47:03 Speaker 04 Oh, I just started talking.
47:05 Dan Harris? I just was saying that, and I'll say a longer version now, that I find your mother's advice so impactful to me personally, because I get so wrapped up in my bullshit that I trudge through life. I, as you say, white knuckle through life. And so it's really helpful to be reminded internally through a story or externally by somebody else, you know, this thing's moving fast. Like, you should enjoy it. It's Ferris Bueller, you know?
47:30 Speaker 04 Absolutely. And because my mom died when I was 20, and then my dad dies later in my life, but he dies one month before Billy on the Street becomes a TV show. So he doesn't see any of my career happen for me, even though he wanted it for me so badly. So because of that, though, I do have a very tangible feeling of life is short just isn't like a theoretical thing in my head. I can feel it. You know, I've seen it with my own eyes. And so I do try to have a good time. And it is a great reminder. And I think a lot of us are white knuckling through things all the time. And we may not even realize it because we've gotten so used to it.
48:09 Dan Harris? Yes.
48:10 Speaker 04 And so I have to remind myself now, like lighten the fuck up. Seriously, like this book, every time I have a project coming out, like the promo is the most stressful part of all, because it's like you've worked so hard. I love the work itself. But then God, is anyone gonna buy it? Is anyone gonna listen to it? Is it gonna get lost in the fray of the algorithm? How is it gonna pop through? Like, I can't compete with friggin Zendaya or whatever. You know what I mean? And I have to remind myself to just lighten up. Like, I'm in entertainment. It's fun. Your fans will find the book. It's like, just have fun. And I don't want to be doing all of this and not enjoying it.
48:54 Speaker 04 It's such a waste.
48:56 Dan Harris? Your dad. The other amazing piece of wisdom at the end of the book comes from your dad. I had a grandmother who spoke Yiddish, but I never heard this term, gnug. Is that it?
49:09 Speaker 04 Gnug.
49:09 Dan Harris? Gnug.
49:10 Speaker 04 Is how my dad would say it. But sometimes he would say, they would say a lot of Yiddish words, but in their own way. So I don't know the correct pronunciation, but as a kid, my dad would always say, gnug. Meaning enough. And he would, my dad would, he would say it occasionally. And when he would say it, the most often is when he would sit at the dinner table and eat and eat and eat. We were Jews. We liked to eat a lot, a lot of carbs. There was no talk about healthy eating ever or exercise when I was growing up. When they finally opened a gym in my neighborhood in Queens, they opened like a Lucille Roberts and my parents and I walked past it on our way to the movies. Of course, we went to the movies together
49:54 Speaker 04 every single Saturday night and on our way to the movie theater and they had windows to the gym. So you could look inside. My dad looked at these people exercising as if they were like, he's, he called them lonely widows. They were like freakish aliens to him that they were on shred mills. It was so foreign to him that someone would choose to do that with their time, right? To exercise. You know, again, this was the eighties. Now, now we're all like fitness crazed, but like, it was so funny to me. So my dad, he wasn't hugely overweight, but he had the gut, you know? And he would eat and eat and eat. And then every night, he, almost every night, he would have like two scoops of ice cream
50:36 Speaker 04 for dessert. But then I would watch him and he would almost like kind of gently throw the utensils down, not in like a violent way, but just like a, put them down it with intent, like intently and then mutter to himself, "Gnug." Meaning he was telling himself enough. Yeah, that always stuck with me too. You gotta tell yourself that sometimes, especially in our age of anxiety and constant algorithm induced spiraling. Gnug.
51:06 Dan Harris? Can you use it in your life to combat our innate insatiable ability? Like you find that for you, your dad's Yiddish utterance will surface in your mind when you're
51:19 Dan Harris? Spiraling out of control and wanting something.
51:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, I try. It doesn't always help. But yeah, I remember those two things, actually. My mom saying, have fun. You don't be crazy. You have to have fun. Don't stop being so crazy. So funny to me because it was my bar mitzvah party. Stop being so crazy. People will dance. You know, um, that's, that's stuck, stuck with me. What really stays with me about my dad is he was this guy from the Bronx. If you know the actor Alan Arkin, who passed away, I think recently. He was also from the Bronx and around my dad's age, like Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine was very much my dad.
52:04 Speaker 04 Um, and if you're looking for a visual and my dad had this just instinctive hatred of bullshit. Of anything that read to him or felt like bullshit or affectation or artifice. Right. And that really is a part of who I am. And my mother too, we did not like affectation. We loved a great performance on stage. That was our favorite thing. But in real life, if someone seemed overly affected or pretentious or something, we had, we were like New Yorkers who had no time for that.
52:46 Dan Harris? How have you survived in Hollywood? It's seen, I'm not, I'm not in Hollywood, but it seems like it's a lot of that.
52:52 Speaker 04 I literally say that in my book. I say that quality I inherited from my dad, that like very low threshold for bullshit has not served me well in my industry of choice. Um, and one, I think I'm really good about my work creatively. Well, you know, we all have things that are better, things that are a little less good, but I think overall I'm proud of my work. I think it's unique and it's solid and maybe not for everyone, but I think it's good. And I work really hard and I put my heart on the line every time. That part I'm good at, the work itself, the other stuff, the marketing of yourself and kinda
53:38 Speaker 04 the schmooziness of it all. I can turn it on when I need to.
53:45 Speaker 04 But it's tough for me, quote unquote, playing the game. I have low patience for that. And I do sometimes wonder, would I be farther along if I had more tolerance for it? Or if I didn't speak my mind as much, because that really will trigger people.
54:03 Dan Harris? Yeah, you might like yourself less.
54:05 Speaker 04 Absolutely, which is why I don't do it. And I never cared about being the most famous person or the richest person, never. I am so much more famous than I even ever thought I would be. And I'm not that famous. I'm always, I always think of myself as like the least famous, famous person. But I don't give a shit. I just wanted to do off Broadway plays. And somehow Billy on the Street took off and it led to all these really wonderful, exciting TV and film opportunities. I am telling you, a life in the theater for me, that would be number one. You know, and it's strangely the one thing I like haven't done. I hope to do it.
54:43 Speaker 04 But so for me, if I've lost opportunities because I I've been a little impolitic or whatever, or I've spoken out of line, or someone thought I was speaking out of line, or I was a little too brash for someone, that's just gonna have to be okay, because I have to live with myself.
55:02 Dan Harris? I have to say, as we went down here, um, in my little focus group, everybody I brag to about the fact that you're coming on the show knew who you were.
55:10 Speaker 04 Oh, that's nice.
55:12 Dan Harris? Before I let you go, anything you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to?
55:15 Speaker 04 One thing I'm surprised you didn't ask me, because everyone else does, is why only an audiobook?
55:20 Dan Harris? What's the answer?
55:21 Speaker 04 The answer is because I really wanted people to hear my voice and to not listen to my story in the Billy on the Street voice.
55:31 Dan Harris? Ah.
55:32 Speaker 04 Um, and I thought this would be a nice way of doing that. I also love, love, love, love listening to audiobooks from entertainers that I love. It's a rare opportunity to like hear them and it feels like they're talking to you, you know? And I love that, so I wanted to give people that experience. You don't have to include that if you don't want to.
55:51 Dan Harris? I want to. Just final, final thing. Just remind everybody of the name of the book and where they can get it.
55:57 Speaker 04 It's called Billy on Billy. It's an audio memoir. It's out everywhere and anywhere you can get an audiobook on May 19th. Spotify, Audible, Apple, independent audiobook sellers everywhere.
56:10 Dan Harris? I've loved meeting you. Thank you for doing this.
56:12 Speaker 04 Thank you so much.
56:13 Dan Harris? I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Podpeople. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Head on over, please, to danharris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox. Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful. So that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize in your life
56:56 Dan Harris? immediately, either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science. It's short, it's easy to read, it's worth it, it's free. Sign up at danharris.com.
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