Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Billy Eichner On: White-Knuckling Through Life, Hollywood Bulls**t, and the Two Pieces of Advice That Changed Everything

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

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, 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 Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Additional Resources:  Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here! To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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 of things before we hear from our sponsors. If you haven't already checked out my newish 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 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 relationship. 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,

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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. Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of. The new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish.

It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship. I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind. That makes you happier and less reactive because you're steadier. That improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier.

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Visa USA, Inc., C-terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton Debit Flex card, and Bank Cepard, and Bank Corp. Debit Flex card. Cash App, Green Features, Savings, Direct Deposit, Roundup, overdraft Coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block Incorporated brand. Visit Cash.com slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. Billy Echner, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you. Very excited to talk to you.

Let me quote you back to you. Oh, God. 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.

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 going to 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 look, I'm not saying some of it. I take this as a personal attack? No, no, no, no, because 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, we're sitting in their house one day and decided, I know what I'm going to do, tell someone 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 going to 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. 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, yeah, 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. There's, you know, I'm telling you my story. 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. And 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. I agree. And I do want to say the book, there are some quite helpful things in the book that I'm going to 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 other- That I'm looking at it. Yes. Well, I think you were looking for it. 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. Yeah. You know, and I have a real therapist in real life. And now people are going to chat GPT and all of these other smart bot apps, whatever you call them, 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 as 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. Fair enough. And it becomes narcissistic in a way. Yes. You know what I mean? Exactly. You asked me before the interview to keep an eye on your posture. Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah. My posture becomes terrible in these interviews. And then, you know, I go on YouTube and I look like, like a hunchback or something. You know, no offense to hunchbacks. I don't want the hunchback community to cancel me. Don't at me.

You know, but yes, thank you for reminding me to have a good question. I'll keep an eye on it for, I got your back. You do, however, and 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. Oh, no. 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? 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. 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. But again, it's because I haven't done it enough, and I probably don't really understand how to do it. So the problem isn't that every time he sits 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. 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. You consistently see a shrink, though, and so I'm assuming. Yes, I do. 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. Right. I'm not teaching my brain. Oh, if you're doing this, you've just made a big mistake. 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, 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,

of a know-it-all, really wanted to be a good actor, but also had this kind of like smart-allicky energy about me. Could you imagine? Based on my work. 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. But it wasn't until later in my life that I got an actual therapist. And I love therapy. You talked about your act, and I'm sure you hear this all the time. We've never met before today, and 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. That's right. That's a big reason why I wrote the book. 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. Yeah. But it's not the real me. And I think you get to an age. I did my first Billy on the street video from 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. And 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 on stage. And then we did this segment on the street

where I kind of did that cat 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, and I have had a handful of acting opportunities where I got to play different types of characters and more multidimensional people

that seemed more grounded and more human and more relatable. But I'm still mostly known as Billy on the street. And 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. So in some ways, is the book a career move in that you might get different roles if people have a more holistic view of you? I think maybe partially, yeah. I think it's an emotional. emotional move from 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. You have no gray hair? I have a little gray hair. 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. I see. You know? Well, that really speaks to the complicated relationship to Billy in the Street, that you would want to look different so you're no longer confused with that guy. It's not that cut and dry, though, because 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 You know, that idea came along later in my 20s. When I was a very serious student in acting class, and I said I had this amazing teacher, if you asked the kids at Northwestern who saw me performing, you know, what I was doing, I was doing Chekhov and Shakespeare and Angels in America and musicals. I was in the musical theater program, and it was so eclectic. And I really took it seriously. And I was doing scenes from, you know, Harold Pinter, betrayal 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 90s, 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 Klein,

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. And what so much of the book is about is about how much theater my parents took me to see. 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 80s and 90s in New York who were sadly using their work to respond to AIDS for the most part. But a side effect 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. Yeah. You know what? As you're speaking, my head is spinning a little bit of thinking about the fact

that this this impulse on your part is I think a universal thing like we all get typecast that's right we all like we know there is some story that people have about us that they that they tell behind our backs like we are all in a work context in a profession 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. I've had some opportunities. I think Bros was a good step in that direction. That's a very complicated, multi-dimensional character that I got to write and play in that. 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 want to be clear that I love that persona. This is about building on that and expanding on that. And also, 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. 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. A question of a, 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. And I do, Dan. 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 is served up to me all that time. 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. 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. I guess that's true. 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. I get photos of very buff, hairy ben, and mixed in with interviews with Madonna from 1992. So you're looking for a bear. Good for you, Dan. Yeah, I got a lot of gay friends.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, a certain kind of bear. Yeah, a bear and otter. Oh, I didn't know what's an otter. 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. So like a twink version of a bear. That's right. Good for you. How am I doing? I'm doing all right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Twink bear. Yeah. Okay. Like a twunk there or something like that. Let's get back to Billy and you've referenced this a couple 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. 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, who 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 satirize my own extreme, over-extreme interest in the entertainment industry. And so I thought, well, what if I play 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 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 Merrill Streep, sorry, Merrill Streep, or whoever it might be, you know, a pop singer, Madonna, whatever it is. 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. 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, 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 Barbara Streisand's Broadway album, which was like my introduction to show tunes. And I would be belting out at the top of my lungs. 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 going to 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 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 hope it's that. Taking nothing away from mothers, because mothers are amazing. There is something in my experience special about a father's love.

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 Barbara Streisand, and they took me. And they weren't rich, but they used what they had. I wasn't only child, so I benefited from that. And they would take me into the city, and we went to see 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, 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 shit. shame about being gay than 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. It's beautiful. It 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. That's a very nice way of putting it. Thank you. 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 book about my childhood. They didn't say that it had to be about my childhood. All the publisher said was we wanted to be personal. We wanted 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 going to be about? And I thought, okay, what is the root of all of this? Why was I able to accomplish all of this? Being gay, not ever being the prettiest person to walk to 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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 is in particular one really searing memory where you witness the aftermath of a fight they had. Can you talk about that? I think you saw your mother in the kitchen after a fight. 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 80s and 90s. And she also had an underlying heart condition, which leads to her having a heart attack when I was in college, which I talked about in the book. But before that, taking those people,

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. 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 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 mom being like a Jewish mother had like so, my God, she was constantly hugging me and kissing and everyone. You know, she was like this, 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 have 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. And she was saying, she was like kind of crying to herself. And 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. 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 part of me was mad because I didn't like when she was on the pills. It would change her personality. 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 all kids do.

I don't know. I was never another kid. But 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 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. 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. 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 antagonism 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 going to 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. 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. 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 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 that was devastating for him, he went. He went immediately and went on Prozac and it changed his life. He'd never been happier. Wow. 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 think she was very resistant to openly discussing anything that she didn't feel great about. Yeah, people are complicated. That vulnerability, she didn't want to admit it out loud. It's hard to admit out loud. Yeah. As you said at the beginning of this conversation and you say in the beginning of your new

audiobook, 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. Yeah, so I talk about my bar mitzv party a lot in the book. I, being a young, culture, obsessed, gay child, I art directed my bar mitzvice 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, I'm a, but I, I 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. 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. Mines was Madonna, of course. All the parents' tables were named after Broadway shows. We had dancers. We really leaned in. And I had this vision that, you know, people were going to 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 tune 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 towards the beginning, maybe getting into 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.

And at the top of the list I wrote in a pencil with underlined words, these songs must be played. And that list included like some obscure show tunes that your typical bar mitzvad 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 dream seemed to be falling apart 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.

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 think about my mom saying that to me. And it's like, please don't be crazy. Everything's amazing. You have to have fun. If we don't remember your mother's advice, we just trudge through life. 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 death, I can now look at it every single day. And I was looking at my bar mitzvah video 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

I was 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 was saying in the book, I was like, you know, Luca Guadigino, 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 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 lives while they're like

13 year old child is like having a nervous breakdown you know because like the Madonna portrait doesn't look right sorry what was the question I forget what you said I was just I didn't even ask a question I just started talking

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 trudged 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 as Ferris Bueller, you know.

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 happened 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. Yes. 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 going to buy it? Is anyone going to listen to it? Is it going to get lost in the fray of the algorithm? How is it going to 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. It's such a waste. 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. Gunnug. Is that it?

Gunnug. Gnug 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 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 like 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 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 called them lonely widows. They were like freakish aliens to him that they were on shredmills. 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 80s 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, almost every night, he would have like two scoops of ice cream 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 muttered to himself gnug meaning he was telling himself enough

yeah that always stuck with me too you got to tell yourself that sometimes especially in our age of anxiety and constant algorithm induced spiraling can you use it in your life to combat our innate insatiability. Like, you find that for you, your dad's Yiddish utterance will surface in your mind when you're spiraling out of control in wanting something.

Yeah, I mean, I try. It doesn't always help. But yeah, I remember those two things, actually. My mom's saying, have fun. Don't be crazy. You have to have fun. Don't stop being so crazy. funny to me because it was my bar mitzv party. Stop being so crazy. People will dance. You know, that's, that's 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 and Little Miss Sunshine was very much my dad. 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. 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 were like New Yorkers who had no time for that. 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.

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. 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 kind of the schmoozyness of it all, I can turn it on when I need to, 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. Yeah, you might like yourself less.

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. And it's strangely the one thing I haven't done. I hope to do it.

But so for me, if I've lost opportunities because 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, just going to have to be okay because I have to live with myself. I have to say, as we went down here, in my little focus group, everybody I brag to about the fact that you're coming on the show knew who you were. Oh, that's nice. Before I let you go, anything you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to? One thing I'm surprised you didn't ask me because everyone else does is why only an audiobook? What's the answer? 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. 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. I want to. Just final, final thing.

just remind everybody of the name of the book and where they can get it. 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. I've loved meeting you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much.

I want to thank everybody who works 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 Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir, 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 Dan Harris.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 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.