WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 949 - Billy Eichner

Episode Date: September 9, 2018

Billy Eichner was singing before he was yelling. The star of Billy on the Street had an early love of Broadway and musical theater but, as he tells Marc, comedy didn’t come quickly. No stand-up, no improv, no sketches. Then he developed a stage show in New York and the seeds of his comedic persona were planted. Billy also talks about the new season of American Horror Story, his role in the upcoming remake of The Lion King, and the return of Billy on the Street. This episode is sponsored by Sam Morril: Positive Influence on Comedy Central, YouTube Music, Stamps.com, and Starbucks Doubleshot. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. L'shana Tova, Jews. Happy New Year, Jews. Non-Jews, welcome to year 5779. That's right, year 5779 on the Hebrew calendar. on the Hebrew calendar. Good morning. Good morning to you.

Get ready to atone. That comes up in a week or so. This is the good times. This is the apples and honey times. This is the time where you blow the show for a bit. Shofar, I should say, not the guy driving. Anyways, yeah, sort of a Jewish-themed show, I guess. Not really.

Two Jews on the show, but that happens a lot. But Billy Eichner's on the show today. I just got back from Minnesota. You know, there's stuff going on. They had some good shows. But before I get into the bulk of what I'm going to blather on about, I wanted to give a little shout-out to my buddy Matt Bronger. You remember Matt Bronger? You even know Matt Bronger. He's been on the show a couple

of times. He's a funny guy. He was also on my IFC show, Marin. He played the vet, the veterinarian. He's got a podcast that you should check out called Advice from a Dipshit with Matt Bronger. People call in, they leave a message asking for advice, and then Matt

answers them without having listened to them beforehand. So it's in the moment. It's kind of a dipshit Dear Abby, if you will. Helping people based on the many mistakes Matt has made along the way in his bungling life to this point. So go check that out, Advice from a Dipshit with Matt Bronger. You can get it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts. I was happy for Matt doing the thing. So I thought I'd tell you about it.

I am honestly exhausted because what I do is I go do these shows. I was in Minneapolis at Acme Comedy Club, one of the best comedy clubs in the country. And we had some great shows out there. Me, the guy who middled was Greg Coleman, very funny, and the guy who hosted Ali Sultan, funny people. And it was great, and I'm exhausted, because what I do is I have to come back and do this on Sunday. So I fly back at very early in the morning and I don't generally sleep on the

plane and I fester and I eat peanuts and whatever I just I every time I come home and I do this after a weekend away I feel like I have the fucking flu I don't just a little tired and I gotta tell you that I hadn't done acne and I guess I guess it's been a couple years, and I've been doing these club dates to sort of build out some stuff, and it's just, it is so relieving and great to be doing stand-up in an amazing comedy room, just an intimate, tight, well-worn room like Acme in Minneapolis,

and I love Minneapolis. I love the audiences there, and I'm not just pandering for no reason i taped a special there they're just they're good people they're polite people they're they're cultured people uh they they love comedy they're good audiences and i mean maybe it's a midwestern thing the politeness thing but it's it is kind of because i think even the assholes are kind of polite in Minnesota, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe someone needs to correct me on that, a Minnesotan. But I think in these chaotic times, we strive to maintain some sort of calm or at least ritual in our life. And I'm not talking religious ritual. It's just, you know,

every day is an onslaught of this garbage fire of a culture right now and you've still got to manage and and the word manage implies things like you know everything seems very unmanageable many things are unmanageable many things seem completely out of our control so sometimes you hold on kind of tightly to the things you think you can control you have a you're, it's almost like a life preserver on some level. If you, cause you're just drowning in the chaos that is the daily news or, uh, having a hard time breathing in the garbage air, whatever it is. My point is the idea of managing can, can be pretty tight.

And, you know, when you get that tight, aggravated need to manage or, you know, need to fight the fights, even if they're small, you know, birds will shit on you. If you're walking around tied like a knot, life will kick you in the groin. And I made that non-gender specific, the groin. Could have went with balls there. Or I could have went with, you know, could have went with you know the vag but i did not did not keeping it general so here's the point that i'm trying to make i'm not a prima donna i don't live excessively i save my money but recently i realized hey you're 54 years old you got no wife and no kids what are you saving it for exactly so i got a house and

now like i'll try to stay at a nice hotel occasionally fly fly first class when i can which is always if possible that's what i do with my money i don't buy expensive things i buy reasonable things and if i like them i'll buy three or four of them uh example some nike shoes the wild horses which i you never know when Nike's going to not make the shoe you like anymore. Bought three pairs of those. Planet Waves, the Bob Dylan record. I got five of those. Why? I don't know. I don't know because I like the record. It doesn't make sense. You only need one. I got backups. But point is managing, tightly wrapped, aggravated, trying to keep it together.

You know, I guess you can meditate, can breathe, you can pray, you can exercise. I do one of those things, exercise right now, but I'm a little tightly wrapped. So I come in hot. I'm coming in hot. I get out of the car. I get to Minneapolis. I go to the fancy hotel, which I'm excited about. I'm checking in. I go, hey, you know, because as many of you know, I'm doingneapolis i go to the fancy hotel which i'm excited about i'm checking in i go hey you know because i'm as many of you know i'm doing tea now i stopped the coffee and i

figured out a way to ritualize it didn't take much tea is it demands ritual as does most brewed drinks uh but i'm still got a kind of a compulsive, addictive personality. And the idea of bringing loose tea and plastic bags that I can roll up, you know, plays into my the old days, the back in the day drug bags. But I got my teas with me and I like to get set up in the room if I'm going to be there for a few days with the tea. So I say to the guy, I'm going to need a water kettle up in the room to boil water. He's like, no, we don't have one of those. And I'm like, just right then, I'm like, what the fuck? How the fuck? You know, it's not that big an ask.

You know, and this is a high-end hotel. I mean, what the fuck? How can you not have a goddamn water kettle to boil water with? I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. I didn't say that. I mean, what I said was, oh, really? Okay, that's strange. Okay, okay.

So there was a subtext there of like are you fucking kidding me and i but my brain won't let it go so i said you really don't have a tea kettle you don't have a water kettle that seems ridiculous to me he's like no we don't i'm like you know they're not that expensive you could just buy them i you know you could buy them for the hotel you could have a couple he's like that's not really my job and i'm like all right fine fine but i couldn't let it go because i didn't want to go downstairs every day i don't want to call room service every day to have fucking hot water so i could make my own silly tea in the room i usually go i get in i go to whole foods i get some almond milk i get some nuts and stuff

and i have i'm set up i got to set up so i can have tea and at least some snacks in the room that aren't you know horrible and don't you know i have delivered to me so i couldn't let go of the tea kettle the water kettle the boiler i couldn't let go of it so i fucking dropped my bags in my room and i went to target i went to target because i'm like i'm gonna spend how much could it cost for a fucking water kettle you know for me to have for the weekend is it worth it just to get for the weekend and throw it away or you know let the fucking hotel keep it for the next people that's the magnanimous thing that was in my head kind of it was kind of in my head i'll just go buy the hotel a water kettle so i stomp out of there and i'm on my way to target i stop at walgreens just to visit the travel sizes section i don't know why i like to go to the travel size section but it's calming

to me i do not know what it is i'll even go to the walgreens down the street from me here and check the travel sizes it's not even if i need anything i think there's just some excitement i get when i'm like oh look they make that in a little one. Oh, that's a little one of those. Oh, so I got grounded in the front of the travel sizes and I go to Target and I find a water kettle, a water boiler, $14.99 and I bought it. And they're like, do you want a bag? I'm like, no, because I want to walk in with it in plain sight because there's theatrics involved to my spite right now. I'm fighting the good fight.

I'm doing the righteous thing. I am doing what this hotel should have done. I'm going to make a point with the box. I didn't say that. I said, no bag. Thank you. And I walk out of there. say that i said uh no bag thank you and i walk out of there i got my box and i'm ready to walk in with a big fuck you to the guy who works at the hotel to the hotel itself with my box with my

water boiler in it i i'm just stomping down the street from target so i got it was like a mile walk and i've got the tweet in my head i mean i got a plan man i locked into this you know why because the fucking world is on fire everything is chaotic and out of control things seem hopeless but i got a fight to fight here and it's about a water kettle and it's about some poor dude who just works at this fucking hotel i had the tweet in my head hey heads up at hewing maybe you should get a couple of these if you're an upscale hotel. Here's a pic of the water kettle that I bought at Target. So I stomp away. I stomp away. And I'm excited. I'm focused. I am focused on the task at hand.

So I'm about to walk into the hotel with my box and my water boiler in it and just to sort of like kind of you know as i walk by the desk you know tilt the box so the dude who told me they didn't have one could see it and i'm lit up i'm excited about this dumb petty victory and i walk in and that guy's gone he's off work and standing where he was uh is a nice pregnant woman seemed nice at the moment that i saw her feeling stupid uh but apparently something had been communicated because i walked in and she saw me with my box. And she said, oh, you went and bought your own, huh? Well, we found you one.

We found one. So I'm just standing there. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then she says, do you want me to return that for you? I live by Target. Do you want me to return that for you? And I'm like it like so perfect it was such a beautiful i was the asshole that stormed out to stormed out to target to buy a fucking water kettle to make a point and because i needed one but but more to make a point and i'm gonna let the nice pregnant woman take it back for me not that she couldn't

but why would i what you know i'm not an asshole i am kind of an asshole but i i said no no i'll take it back i'll take it back tomorrow thank you thank you for getting me that the water kettle so the whole plan's just spoiled and i'm just humbled i was humbled right out of my pissy bullshit yeah, and that was how I entered Minnesota. But it was good to be humbled. I got hit a couple times with the humbling, though, small things, not big things, you know. Whole Foods, I went to Whole Foods

to load up on the salad bar, and then, like, you know, everything was just pissing me off. I go to Whole Foods, and I'm about to pay for my salad and I see a water dispenser machine. I said, can I get, just get water there? There are cups over there. He's like, oh no, that's broken. You got to go to the other side of the store. There's a water fountain. You can get a cup over there. And, and for some reason that again, I was just like,

ah, fuck. I'm like, what? I mean, really? I mean, why am I, what is that part of me? Why is it doing that? Like what kind of Whole Foods is this? I didn't say any of that. I said, oh? I mean, why am I? What is that part of me? Why is it doing that? Like, what kind of Whole Foods is this? I didn't say any of that. I said, oh, okay, just over there. You just get the cup and go over the other side. Yeah. So I go over there. I walk all the way across the store.

Like, that's a big fucking deal. And I get the water. And then I see there's a door there. I go at the door. It's an emergency exit. So the fucking alarm. The whole store is looking at me humbled but again these aren't big deals but at another point in my life it probably would

just skulked off but i guess i've built up a little confidence over the years i can take a hit like that i just stood there and i went someone better turn that off i think don't you stomped out stormed out of the Whole Foods like it was the store's fault for having a door there and one with an alarm, no less. There was another moment, too. Like, this was all in prep

for the great shows that I did. I needed to be taken down a few notches in not too horrible ways. I was online at the Whole Foods and there was a guy in front of me. He turns around once and he turns around again. He looks me right in the face and he says,

wow, it's my first celebrity sighting. I looked at him and then he just turned around, said nothing else. Now, again, that might just be the Midwestern kind of didn't know what to say next thing, or it might be like, oh, and geez, I wish it wasn't you. That was, but see, that's me.

That's my inner dialogue. So I took a few hits, but then we went and did some shows. And they were productive. They were great. They were weird. Some of them got a little dark, but they were all very funny. And the audiences were tremendous. And I want to thank the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis for having me.

Like they gave me the fucking key to the city or something. So Billy Eichner got caught up on a bit of Billy Eichner, very funny man, curious to talk to him about how he got to where he is. How did he get that tone? I was afraid he was going to yell at me. Billy's in the new season of American Horror Story Apocalypse, which premieres this Wednesday, September 12th on FX.

Also, Billy on the Street is returning later this year on Funny or Die and on YouTube. So look out for that. This is me and Billy Eichner here in the new garage. This is me and Billy Eichner here in the new garage. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. So you travel with your assistant? Sometimes, yes.

She's also a producer on Billy on the Street when we're shooting that. I know people come with their people, but it seemed like she came over in the car with you, and I figured, do you need that much assistance? No. She's with you all day. I don't drive. You don't drive at all?

That's right. Really? Yep. You don't know how to drive? Do not know how to drive. Now, why wouldn't you get that out of the way? I grew up in New York City. I get it.

Okay. But I mean, I know a lot of people who grew up in New York City and then eventually learned how to drive. I was not one of those people are you afraid of it i think so yeah i just waited too long and now it's like a mental thing in my head i don't i don't want to drive i don't like that there are other people driving yeah i don't like wheels or blades like i don't want to go like skating oh i don Oh, I thought you meant like knives or like there was some larger. No, I'm okay with that.

I meant like roller blades. Are you okay with tools? I guess. I don't have a ton of experience with that either, but I'm not afraid of them. Like roller blades. So you don't want to be careening out of control. Right, right. I'm worried about myself and I'm worried about, you know, at this point my mind wanders a lot.

You're talking like you're 90. Yeah. Leave me a more wanders. No, I do. Like my mind wanders. I mean, you know, like, and I don't want to get lost and thawed. You want to hurt somebody. Kill someone on the highway.

I get it. But I mean, it's kind of interesting though about driving is that once you learn how to do it you'll be hyper focused while you're learning and it's crazy and then you sort of ease into it and then you just become like it just becomes an appendage almost i did take driver's ed oh you did i had a permit yeah um and then never took the actual driver's test i was really bad at driving and i hated it this is when when you were 15? Something like that. Really? You just couldn't take the stress of it? I hated it. I really hated it. It was one of the few and I like- Because you were terrified. I was scared and like I didn't think I had good hand-eye coordination and- You just couldn't manage it. I hated it. How were you on a bike? Terrible. Oh my God. Well,

I don't even go on one. You don't know how to ride a bike either? I had a bike when I was a kid, but I never go on one now. Yeah. But you knew how to ride that bike? For like a minute. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I didn't enjoy it. Do you know how to swim? I do swim. Okay. Do you swim? So I want to make sure that there was some point in your childhood that was at least having fun with other children. No, I love other children. I like playing and stuff. I played some sports, surprisingly. Oh, yeah? I'm not surprised. I didn't like that, but I did it.

You grew up in the city the whole time? I grew up in Queens. Queens, yeah. And I went to high school in Manhattan. But you were, like, what part of Queens? Forest Hills. Oh, out there. Yeah.

So, Forest Hill Jew. Yep, exactly. It's Forest Hills. Oh, out there. Yeah. So Forest Hill Jew. Yep. Exactly. It's Forest Hills. There are Jews and Koreans. Jews and Koreans. And now there's a lot of like Russian Orthodox. Oh, really?

Who seem Jewish, but they're just Russian. Yeah. Well, I mean, I come, my Jews come from Russia. Half of them. Yeah. Mine too. You kind of always want to identify with them. Like they must be like, but I find that with like, there's this armenians around here i'm like they're kind of jewish i

don't know nothing that's what i mean they feel jewish but they're not they technically are no i think that the russian jews are probably still out in coney island somewhere where are they i don't know where they are i don't know brooklyn yeah i think so it's got to be a big community i think there's one here i think the russ here are Jewish down in Fairfax and stuff. Yeah, for sure. I don't know. I get hung up on the Jewish thing. How Jewish were you?

Not very Jewish. I was forced to go to Hebrew school. I hated it. I was bar mitzvahed. And then the second my bar mitzvah was over, I don't think I've been to a synagogue since. Really? But you did the whole thing. Unless someone died or something.

Right. Well, they have to force you when you're a kid. Yeah, I hated it. But you go. But you did the thing. You did the, what were you, were you conservative? No, I mean. I think I went to a conservative synagogue, but ended up having more of a reform type

of bar mitzvah service because I just refused to do all that work. Really? You didn't learn the songs? You didn't do the- I learned an abridged version of a haft Torah, but I could sing really well. So the synagogue was like all over me thinking, you know, I was going to be a cantor or something. Really? And I was like, I don't even believe in God and I hate being here.

But you could sing in Hebrew. That's no small task. Well, you know, know phonetically i learned what i had to learn they thought you were going to be a canter well they wanted me i mean it's rare for like a boy to be able to sing in school yeah how's that singing voice holding up now it's good i'm in i'm in the freaking lion king remake really yeah in the what the cartoon well they're disney's remaking the lion king for for the movie yeah with uh john favreau's directing it like the way he did jungle book but it's cartoon right it's animated but this is a you know very state-of-the-art digital hyper-realistic animation it's not like drawn like the original. Right. So, oh, okay, so it's got a little 3D

element, almost? Not 3D, but hyper-realistic. Like, if you've ever seen those Planet Earth specials, this animation looks that real, but it's not. It's animated. And you do singing and dancing? No dancing, because it's animated.

I know, but I thought maybe they'd green- screen something. There might be a little moving around. What character are you? I'm Timon. Me and Seth Rogen are Timon and Pumbaa, so we sing Hakuna Matata. Ah. And we sing Can You Feel the Love Tonight a little bit.

Did you already do it? I've recorded most of it. Did you record live with Seth? Yes, we did. Oh. And Donald Glover. He's Simba. And then Beyonce's Nala, but she hasn't been there when I'm there.

That would be fun. Was Donald there? He was, yeah. How's he doing? He's great. So was musical stuff, did you do that when you were younger, too? Yeah. Let's go through it.

So you grew up in Forest Hills apartment house? Yep, small apartment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like one of those big ones? Like not the big apartment, but the big complex, like the big buildings? Not really? Mid-size apartment building, very middle class upbringing, nine to five parents.

Oh, yeah. What'd they do? My dad worked as an accountant for the city of New York doing commercial real estate tax. Huh. So he was like a tax guy. If a business didn't pay their taxes, he would go and- Do you ever have any dealings with Trump? Not as far as I remember.

He wasn't that high up. Is he still around? No, he's not. He passed away. He was older. He died about six, seven years ago. He was 80. Wow.

I had an older dad for someone my age. How old are you? I'm about to be 40. So he had you when he was? Like 46 or something, which for back then was old. Yeah, for sure. Do you have siblings? I have one older half brother from my father's first marriage.

Wow. Are you friends with that guy? We are friends, yeah. We didn't grow up together. I was pretty much raised as an only child. He grew up with his mom, and I grew up with my dad. How much older? He is, what is he now, like 52?

Oh, so older. Yeah. Like 20, or 15, 12. 12, and we didn't grow up together. I would see him every, you know, we'd see him once every couple of months. Yeah, what'd see him once every couple of months. Yeah. What'd your mom do? My mom worked for like basically the phone company, like New York Telephone, which eventually became Verizon.

Yeah. So there you were basically an only child in a small apartment, Forest Hills, Queens. Yep. Mom and dad coming home around five. Six, seven. Six, seven. Yeah. Someone would make you food. They would. Yeah. And were you seven. Six, six, seven. Yeah. Someone would make you food.

They would, yeah. And were you isolated? Like, it's weird. No. I had a lot of friends. I went to public school in Queens until I went to high school in Manhattan. Uh-huh. Also public school, but it was like this specialized sort of, I guess they'd now call it like a magnet school.

Which school was that? Stuyvesant. I've heard of that. Yeah. Didn't some other famous people go there? Yeah, mostly non-actors who are famous, like a lot of people who win, you know, Nobel Prizes and things like that. But a lot of scientists and mathematicians and people who like invented robots.

I don't know their names. The only actors I know who went there are me, Paul Reiser, and Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins and Paul Reiser. Yes. Wow, that's interesting. That's odd. Yes. Those are the only ones?

As far as I know that went to Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant High School. Stuyvesant High School. It's really a math science school. I mean, it's a regular high school. You take all kinds of classes. I did musicals, and I did debate, and all of that school. You take classes. You take all kinds of classes and I did musicals and I did debate and all of that stuff. You were a math

science guy though? I did I don't consider myself one but I did manage to pass the test that you need to take to get into Stuyvesant. And you wanted to go there or your old man wanted you to go there? No, I wanted to go there. Because you thought it was a good school and get you in the city. It's a great school and it got me in the city and

it's the kind of school if you get in you go. Yeah. It was free. I mean it's pretty amazing. So and that's where you started to engage in the showmanship element of your personality. I did that actually from the time

from an even younger age. You were running around yelling at people on the street. I wasn't doing that, but I was singing. That's what really got me into all of it. You were singing in junior high and high school? Elementary school. I just opened my mouth and I had a good singing voice somehow.

And I was obsessed with entertainment and pop music. And, you know, I was in New York. My parents loved Broadway. I did too. So we would go see a ton of Broadway shows and I would buy all the albums. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Do you remember going to your first Broadway show?

Oh, yeah. Starlight Express. Yeah. Was it mind-blown? My mind was blown. Yeah. And I remember, like, one of the—Starlight Express was an Angeloid Webber musical, which is very 80s, where they were all on roller skates. Right. Which you're afraid of.

Which, ironically, I'm afraid of. But I'm not afraid of, like, singing on stage. But I am afraid of roller skates. Yeah. And so the whole ensemble was on roller skates. And so, like, during the curtain call at the end, we were sitting, like, up in the mezzanine or something. And they would sort of roller skate up to you and wave at all the kids in the audience and one of the dancers on roller skates like came right up to me and waved and that blew my entire

mind life-changing moment yeah i wonder if that person knows that they did that to you uh probably not changed your life still alive you know yeah so so that and you went to musicals frequently all the time really your parents just would take you that's nice they love broadway i was very very lucky because i was this little pretty probably clearly gay kid uh who loved broadway and mike madonna and all these things But my parents were very liberal New York Jews who'd both grown up in New York themselves and loved entertainment, had nothing to do with it professionally,

but loved entertainment. My dad in particular, like loved old, you know, I had an older dad. So to him, someone like Streisand wasn't a gay thing. It's what they, they played Streisand on pop radio when he was a kid. And so for him, we, you know,

we had all of these interests in common and so we would go see a ton of Broadway shows and I mean, I was very lucky. You were lucky that you were leaning that way.

Yeah. And had this father that was, I mean, at 80, if he died at 87, he was a contemporary of Barbra Streisand.

Exactly. So it wasn't like he was a kid when Barbra Streisand, that was their music. That was his music. And, you know, we were Jews from New York, too. Yeah, of course, you gotta love Barbra Streisand. Love Barbra, Woody Allen, and all the things. We would go see Jackie Mason on Broadway. My parents, like, flipped out over Jackie Mason.

I don't know what I would think about Jackie Mason now if I went and rewatched those shows. But at the time, you know, I loved it. Yeah, they took you, oh, yeah, I have a problem with him. I know, people don't like him. But I think it's personal. Oh, people, well, I realized later on, I was a kid, so now I'm like, oh, yeah, Jackie Mason was a Republican and this, that, and the other thing, but as a kid, I didn't understand that. No, for me, it wasn't that. There was always something about that notion that when you so kind of aggressively define Jews as a thing.

Yes, I hear you. Jews do this. Goyas do this. Jews do that. And then Jews, they go to a place, they sit down. Not all Jews. It's very old school. But I usually like that.

But there's something about him that I just, there's an elitism to it with him. I see what you're saying. Well, when I was 10, my parents and I couldn't get enough of it. They loved anyone talking about Jews. They just wanted to see themselves talked about and reflected. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's funny because I have a similar problem with Alan King. And it's sort of the same thing you know this sort of defining the middle class jew thing exactly

weird i never thought about that but uh all right so then you're what other shows did you see because i i mean so you're you're like almost 40 i don't see that many musicals but i've seen a few i saw there was a you know a time because my parents were paying for everything. Did you see the black guys and dolls? The black guys and dolls. All black cast? I don't. I saw that.

That on Broadway? It might have been before your time. Yeah. Oh. I don't know. It might have been. It might have been. What I did see was they did a huge revival of guys and dolls, white, unfortunately, in

1992 with Nathan Lane, which is the first time I saw Nathan Lane and in like 1992 with Nathan Lane, which is the first time I saw Nathan Lane, and I became obsessed with Nathan Lane. Sure. And Faith Prince was in it. Why, because you thought he was hilarious? Hilarious, and he just sort of represented like a Broadway to me. Yeah, yeah, sure. And ironically, Nathan was the original voice of Timon,

who I'm doing in The Lion King, which is a crazy, strange- The torch has been passed. Well, I wouldn't say that, but it's just a nice full circle moment. Did you see that Tony Kushner musical? You know, he did Angels in America, but he did that one musical. Carolina Change? Yeah.

I did see that. That was great, right? It was very good. Wasn't it? Yeah. Now I'm just trying to share with you the nine musicals- Yeah, Carolina it was very good yeah isn't it yeah i'm just i'm now i'm just trying to uh to share with you the nine musicals yeah carolina changes that i've seen yeah i saw butyl mania when i was a kid oh i did not see that that was like probably you're too young i'm that yeah by a couple years yeah i saw the magic show with doug henning doug henning i saw that

when i was a little boy. Yeah. I saw that. I missed that one. Yeah, well. I mean, I saw all the musical things. Those aren't real musicals. They're not. Like Phantom and Les Mis and all those things. I didn't see any of those.

Well, you still can. That's the great thing. I know. Cats, I didn't see cats. They're not all still running, but a lot of them are. So that re-informed who you were. In terms of being gay, when did you know that was happening as far back as i can recall oh yeah uh yeah i remember like kind of being attracted to certain

people even when i was a really young kid like i had a poster of john bon jovi in my room bon jovi was huge at the time doesn't necessarily imply that. I'm telling you, my feelings imply that I was attracted to him. The first, other than Jon Bon Jovi, I remember, you know, I grew up in Queens, pretty close to what was then Shea Stadium, which is now Citi Field, and the 86 Mets won the World Series. And so we would watch baseball all the time. And I remember one of the first guys I was attracted to was Keith Hernandez. Oh, yeah?

First baseman for the 86 Mets. And so I must have been, I grew up in, I was born in 78. I was eight years old. And that is a vivid memory. You thought he was the guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You felt that.

He was hot. Yeah, yeah. Daddy issues, everyone. Yeah. But, well, so by the time you got in high school, you're just sort of in. You know, I wasn't out, you know, this was like pre-Glee. You know, we didn't all come out in high school in those days. Sure.

So I came. Just kind of rode it out. Yeah, I rode it out. I mean, one of the nice things about Stuyvesant is that it was such, it's, you know, with all due respect to everyone that goes to Stuy, it's a great school. It's, as far as high schools go, it's not a typical experience. Everyone there, gay, straight, or otherwise, is concerned about grades and SATs. Right.

I don't even know people having sex. Right. Even the straight people. Like, we were all just a bunch of nerds worried about our future. Right. And what college we were going to get into. And in a way, that was a great cloak, you know, because I didn't have to think about coming out or not coming out.

And I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, but that was kind of normal. But you were doing musicals in high school? A couple, yeah. Was that great? It was fun. I did Guys and Dolls. And I mostly, my big outlet for performance in high school was Speech Team, which is kind of this weird cultish thing.

What does that involve? Speech Team is hard to describe. You kind of travel around with the debate team, but you're not doing debate. So Speech Team, it's a series of different categories that you can compete in. There's one called Dramatic Inter compete in. There's one called dramatic interpretation. There's one called humorous interpretation. You can do one with a partner called duo and you're basically reenacting scenes from plays. Really? Essentially. Yeah. You're not writing original speeches. You can do that too. There are categories like

original oratory or prose and poetry. So you can choose what category you want and then you go to other schools, usually kind of ritzy private schools, even though mine wasn't. And you compete against kids basically performing like a 10 minute section from a play. And what did you do generally? I did, I like competing with a friend. So I did duo.

Yeah. So I did me and my friend Gene, one of my best friends from high school, Gene Perelson, we did a scene from a play called Love by Murray Shiskel. Uh-huh. And then when I was a senior in high school, my friend Catherine and I did a scene from The Good Doctor, R.I.P. Neil Simon.

Oh, yeah, it just happened. And we would go compete, and we would travel around, and it was really fun. But you didn't do any comedy ones? Well, the Neil Simon one. The Neil Simon one was comedy, yeah. Got some good laughs. Yeah. So you were starting to get, getting laughs is exciting.

Starting to get laughs, yeah. And then my friend Gene and I would write our own extra scene, which parodied all the other scenes the other kids were doing. Like a spoof where we would make fun of the kids that we would compete against from other schools. Yeah, and you'd do that like at the end? You were the closer? No, we would do that like in the hotel room at night

for like the other kids on our team and entertain them by making fun of everyone. Right. Oh, so that's where it started, the original material. Yeah, exactly. So after, did you go to college? I did. I went to Northwestern.

In Chicago? Right outside of Chicago, yeah. Yeah, and what's the name of that part of Chicago? Evanston. Evanston. Yeah, there's a little theater there. The main stage theater I used to play in Rogers Park. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that's right there, right? Big theater town. Yeah, it's a little theater there. The main stage theater I used to play in Rogers Park. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so that's right there, right? Big theater town. Yeah, it's a close spot. Yeah, yeah, because I remember I stayed at the Hilton in Evanston, right by the school. Yeah. Yeah. So what'd you study there? Theater.

Oh, so that was it. No more math. No more math. No, once, I was surprised when I got into Northwestern. I just assumed I would go to NYU. Right. But I got into Northwestern, and then my dad and I took a trip to visit, and I sat in on an acting class at Northwestern, and that was it.

Really? I was like, let me stop pretending I'm going to be pre-law or something. You just told them on the spot? Yeah, a little while after that. So what was going on in the acting class that made you? It was two students on stage doing a scene from some Chekhov play or something. And the acting teacher was giving them notes and really diving into it. It's just what I always loved. Wow.

That's what I wanted to do. So that was it. That was it. And so as an undergrad, you studied acting? Theater and musical theater, yeah. And then so you got to just do your electives and the rest are, you know. Northwestern, it's not like a conservatory. So they still make you take, you know, a bunch of non-theater related classes.

Right. That's what I mean. And you also have to take costume design. Exactly. Just in case. The pre-law comes back. Yeah, exactly. So I had to take like modern Chinese poetry and things I didn't really care about.

But you had to choose that one. I did. Modern Chinese poetry is not forced upon somebody. No, it's not. You could have done something less esoteric. I think I took it because- You really did take it? I did, but I think it was because everyone said it was easy and you can get away with not doing anything.

Oh, it wasn't some weird. Some weird, some actual interest I had. No, unfortunately. There were some interesting things, you know, intro to sociology. I mean, it's Northwestern. There were good professors. So in terms of the experience you got theatrically, I mean, what was the focus?

How did it work? What was the training? I had an acting class every day for, I'm forgetting, it was a while ago, for an hour or two hours with the same acting teacher every day for three years while I was there. In addition to plays you would do extracurricularly, whether those were directed by teachers or student plays. There's a lot of student theater there. I had friends who would write a musical. We'd put on the musical, or we would just do Little Shop of Horrors

or a more typical show, and I was really, really lucky. I had a great, great acting teacher, Mary Poole, who's still there. And fun fact is that Kristen Schaal and I were in acting class together yeah every day for four really yeah Kristen and I would do like very like earnest scenes from like Greek tragedy and I really wish we had iPhones back then and we had a video of that how can she not be funny she was great yeah she was great but even like she was doing serious stuff yeah she really was you know I know it's

hard to think of it now you know because we're both so known for being kind of wacky comedy people yeah we really we really took it seriously and were you did you do big plays like eventually like like uh or was it all just sort of acting class did you guys oh yeah we did plays i'm having you know it was a while ago yeah we i we did i did like a lanford wilson play yeah yeah we would do chekhov and then we would do you know big musicals you know it was it was there was so much going on there there was also a huge improv scene which strangely in chicago or at northwestern oh yeah and in chicago but at northwestern uh you know which seth myers had been a part of and josh myers and

julie we drive this and kristen shaw is a big part of it when we were there and i had no part of it i didn't have much of an interest in that at that point so you didn't do it at all no huh no comedy really i was i was funny in a play or musical but no improv no stand-up no sketch did you go to steppenwolf or go see plays in in the city at all occasionally yeah yeah yeah so where does things change you graduate and then what do you do i go to new go back to new york yeah back to Queens uh no I shared like a small apartment with friends in Manhattan yeah and go back to New York and a couple of years of doing the struggling actor thing and not getting work auditioning and doing like weird off-off-broadway shit with my friends and yeah weird and uh not that weird but just you know weird children's theater

things and you know whatever yeah you know which children's theater uh my friends like i would write original children's theater shows like family oriented shows that they would ask me to be in it and what else was i doing so i did that And then after a few years of that, I thought that I was not going to get anywhere just waiting in line with a bunch of equity actors at some open call where no one's really getting cast anyway. Yeah. And so I thought, all right, well, what separates me from other people? I guess people say I'm funny. I'll go to where the funny people go. And so I went to UCB and I took all the classes.

So now you're doing improv. Doing it. Yeah. I liked the classes. I still didn't really have much of a desire to join an improv team. I mean, it's an incredible skill, obviously. It just, it wasn't my scene, really. I was decent at it, but it just wasn't how I got off creatively, I guess. Really? It wasn't fun for you to be in the moment? What did you prefer at that point,

if you're taking classes at UCB? I was just kind of trying to find my way. I also took this very strange, like evening stand-up comedy class. who scott blakeman no it was this guy named stephen rosenfeld oh yeah um and he was a very nice man and i just saw an adam backstage stand-up comedy classes i took that class i can't imagine what that was i could it was like a premise for a bad sitcom oh stephen Stephen, I'm really sorry because you were so nice. It wasn't you.

It was just a very bizarre group of people. It was like elderly retired ladies looking to do something fun, really awful wannabe young stand-ups, and then some really talented people. But the reason I took it is because I wanted someone to force me to write. I didn't have the discipline. And I thought if I signed up for a class, even if it was weird, I would have to write. But you were compelled somehow to do stand-up a bit.

I was just testing the waters. I knew I was funny or people said I was funny, but I didn't know where I belonged in the world of comedy, like proper comedy outside of being funny in theater, which is really what felt comfortable to me. Sure. Someone else's words. Right. But I wasn't getting work. Right.

And so I thought, well, I got to figure out how to make my own work. And that was a stepping stone towards all that. And Steven was really great. I didn't really even know him for that long, but because I took, I don't know, eight weeks of classes or something like that and then never went back, but he encouraged me to stick with it, you know? And I remember teachers at UCB, Paul Scheer was like a teacher of mine at UCB and Michael Delaney and all those guys were really nice. They didn't know who

I was. I was just a kid in their class, but they were really encouraging. So, but what did you learn in the comedy class? I'm curious. Which one? Stephen Rosenfeld's comedy. Oh, boy. You know, he would, well, maybe this did end up applying to me based on my work. But, you know, I remember one thing he said was, if you don't know what to write about, find something you're angry about and write about that. And anger did end up factoring heavily into my act, so. Into which act? which really on the street

in a in a pseudo way sure but did you ever usually with those classes you know the payoff is you get to perform yeah you did you know you had to do like some weird show at like 5 30 p.m at caroline's or something over and bring your friends and make them pay for it or something like that. It was one of those. You did those. So you tried standup? A handful of times. Yeah. But never in a real club or never, I mean, never for a real audience? I don't know what you mean by real audience. Maybe like on a night? No, I wouldn't go and hang out at New York, stand up New York and wait to get a slot.

That environment did not feel comfortable to me. Sure. Yeah. All right, so you take the class and you're taking the, but you never, did you eventually get into an improv group or no? No, I didn't want to be performing improv all the time. So you went through what, two years of, uh, UCB? Four, there's like four classes at the time.

Maybe now there's more, but there were, I think there were four levels and I did it all. And I was like, okay, I did that. I get what this is. You did Steven Rosenfeld's Comedy Institute. And then I took the Steven Rosenfeld's Comedy Institute. And then I thought, all right, what am I going to do with all of this? I thought, all right, what am I going to do with all of this? So I started writing my own show, which became a show called Creation Nation, which was like a live talk show. I loved talk shows,

right? I loved late night talk shows. I grew up obsessed with Regis and Kathie Lee. I liked all talk shows. Kathie Lee. Oh, she's fantastic. I love her. Oh, yeah. I used to watch her years ago. It was sort of a guilty pleasure where you would just watch the way she talked about her kid. Yeah. Cody.

Was that his name? There's a few. Cassidy. Yeah, she has a few kids. But no, when I was watching occasionally, she would talk about Cody. I'm like, this kid's in trouble. Oh. I think her kids actually are doing pretty well.

But I don't really know um but i still love kathy yeah and um i was obsessed with those shows again they felt like show business to me yeah um and so but no one was giving me a tv show obviously so i created my own version of a late night talk show to do on stage creation nation it was called creation nation it was a live show a live show and you were doing it where UCB, you were going to put it up? We ended up, I eventually ended up doing a version of it at UCB. But first I was playing small performance spaces downtown, bars. And then we moved to a theater on 54th street called ars nova yeah i know that and ars nova was a huge part of my development isn't that playwrights theater ars nova or is it just

a theater they do plays there too oh yeah they do all kinds of performances and you know shaw was performing there too bridget everett started out there lin-Manuel Miranda and his hip hop team Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch. Absolutely Liz Flahive Carly Mensch were doing plays there. Bo Williman Liz Merriweather, Tommy Kail and Lin-Manuel. We were all there at the same time doing different types of

shows and Ars Nova was huge for me So there was a community around it. There was. Yeah. And it was community around it. Like it's, there was, yeah. And it was, it was for a lot of people. It was for a lot of us who kind of felt stuck between the traditional kind of stuffy theater world,

which wasn't ready for us and a comedy world that was a bit, you know, for lack of a better word, like heteronormative or something, you know, like I didn't feel that there was the, there was a place for me in that world. Not just because of the gay thing, but also just sensibility wise. Again, like I didn't really want to be on an improv team.

I appreciated the skills that that took to be good at it. It wasn't creatively satisfying for me. Well, you sound like you're a theater guy. I'm a theater guy. Yeah. I mean, Liz and Carly, I work with them. I'm on GLOW. Of course. Oh, that's right. Right, you sound like you're a theater guy. I'm a theater guy. Yeah, I mean, Liz and Carly, I work with them. I'm on GLOW. Of course. Oh, that's right. Right, right, right.

So, I've talked to them about this, and I've had Lin Manuel Miranda on here, too. Yep. I don't know if we talked a lot about Ars Nova. We must have, though. So, that was an exciting bunch of people. Yeah. And they were, so it wasn't, were you a founding member or shortly thereafter? I'm not a

founding member. Ars Nova had been there a few years. Not that long, though, right? I don't know. Maybe they started, I don't know, 2003 or something. There's an artistic director of Ars Nova who's still there. His name is Jason Egan. Everyone I've mentioned, Jason is pretty much responsible for finding somewhere, somehow, or reading their work and bringing them into Ars Nova.

That's exciting. So did you guys all see each other kind of deal? Did you guys see each other's shows? Absolutely, yeah. We were all in and out. Ars Nova would do these late night kind of vaudeville-inspired variety shows where I would come out and do 15 minutes or I would show. I was doing what would become Billy on the Street videos as part of my live show.

That's where Billy on the Street started. So the live show was you would host a talk show. Yes. A friend of mine, I brought in my friend Robin Taylor, who's now on Gotham, as my sidekick. I brought in musician friends from Northwestern to be my house band. I would sing songs. I would do a topical monologue. I would write about the news. I would get friends to whoever I could to be my quote unquote celebrity guest. Sometimes it was just a friend who was in the ensemble of a Broadway show or whoever I could fake as a celebrity guest. And eventually I would rant and rave about pop culture. I would do crazy movie reviews, crazy musical numbers, whatever I wanted I could do.

We'd do crazy movie reviews, crazy musical numbers, whatever I wanted I could do. And as part of that, I started to evolve into this persona who was getting, as the evening went on, just more and more irrationally angry about celebrity. And that turned into, hey, what if we go on the street and I kind of do what I'm doing on stage, but in someone's face and see how they react. And so my friend Jamie Salka, who was directing the show, we got a camera from Radio Shack or wherever and a cheap microphone. And we went out and just started filming these interviews with people on the street and having no idea if any of it was going to be worth something. Right. And we would cobble it together into a five to seven minute video, not that unlike the things I still do. Yeah.

And we would show it on a screen at Ars Nova. There was a screen you could use. And from the first time we ever showed it, it got a huge response. Yeah. People just like this weird thing. Yeah. And so what's interesting to me is the evolution of the character.

Yeah. Because you can drop right into it now. You know where that guy lives. Totally. Yes. But it's something that evolved on stage. On stage and then on the street. You know when I first- Right.

But the theatricality of doing a variety show or doing a talk show yeah and then eventually just sort of coming on hinge like that build if there was a build yeah there was an absolute build when the when the show started off i would come out there'd be some sort of opening theme song i would do a topical monologue but i wasn't screaming and yelling it was all all, I mean, it was performative, but it was not over the top. And over the course of this 80, 90-minute show, I would kind of unravel.

Yeah, every time. Every time, about different topics, but it would have the same arc. Yeah. So the show really was, it was always to define because it it was a comedy show it didn't have the depth of a play but it had theatrical elements to it and it kind of took you on a sorry to use this word journey yeah from like point a to b to c in terms of what my character or persona was going through right and but this was something that you

you sort of you crafted the trajectory beforehand like you wrote it in you said we're gonna end up exactly like you knew the arc after a certain point was all scripted so right so the comedy was like i'm gonna lose my shit over this ridiculous thing correct this month yeah oh this month it's gonna be about johnny depp Or I would do these very long, long rants about celebrities who at the time, you know, now Johnny has issues. But at the time he was very revered. Like no one would talk. He was so cool. He was so talented.

And he was all of those things. But I would find reason to get incredibly angry at him. And I would lash out at him. Yeah. And I would lash out at him on stage. And he was just one of the people. You know, every month it was someone else. Right. I like the organic process of it. So, like, at the beginning of creating the shows, that wasn't the – were they always like that or did that sort of –

No, that found itself as we went. Yeah? Yeah. I didn't know what it was at the beginning. So at the beginning, you were kind of doing a straight up talk show. Like you just- Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of satire in it always.

You know, American Idol was a big thing at the time. We're talking 2004 or 2003. So we did a segment called American Actor where we were going to find the next American Actor. So we, you know, which sounds kind of hack now, but American Idol had just come out. So, you know, we were always satirizing celebrity and TV, but the persona really took shape between like 03 and 05 when I got to Ars Nova, it really started to hit its stride. Wow.

Because when I watch the street segment, it's like any sort of interaction, you're entering. It's such a pitch. Yeah. So what you sort of did over time was just get rid of the buildup, and you just exist. Totally. I exist as that persona. Irrationally angry from the get-go. Sometimes there is a build-up.

It's not, you know, when people think about Billy on the Street, they lean very heavily into, oh, he's screaming. He's the guy who shouts all the time. If you really watch, I'm not shouting all the time. But it does get to a point

where I am most of the time. It reminds me, because I like that. There's a few people that have done that as comedic personas. Like Gene Wilder did that. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, there's that build. There's a build. And the build is really important.

And that's why I've never taken my hands off of the editing of the show. Because so much of it is in the editing and in the build. So you're doing like how many series, how many have been on? Like where are we at with that? We, Billy on the Street had five seasons of half hour episodes on TV. After, well, going farther back, I was doing the videos for my live show. YouTube came along. I was putting the videos on YouTube. show youtube came along i was putting the videos

on youtube they went viral did they yeah a couple of them went viral so uh the segments or the whole shows just the the segments billy on the street video so that was uh so you were sort of um youtube at that time helped break you a bit oh not a bit a lot yeah i don't think i would have had a career without youtube and not only youtube but then i needed facebook and twitter to come along to give me a platform to share the youtube link youtube wasn't enough so like there were two that like got millions of views there was like two that i did that that got they probably have millions now but certainly like hundreds of thousands and they played particularly well to people in the industry because they're about the industry.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Sure. So because I had lots of agents come to Creation Nation, my live show, before I had before YouTube, really, before I had viral videos. And, you know, there were huge articles about my show in The New York Times and everyone was very complimentary, but no one knew quite what to do with all of this. And so what the YouTube videos allowed me to do is to go in and say, hey, well, you don't know what to do or you think like, oh, this person's not going to get me or that person's not going to get me. Well, 500,000 people watched my video yesterday.

So I have to be worth something. What year was that? This was like 09. And then Funny or Die got in touch with me. Mike Farah at Funny or Die. He's the CEO. And he reached out and said he loved my videos. And that if I was.

And they're looking for videos. And they were looking for videos. Yeah. And i was pretty desperate at this point really and so money wise money wise yeah life wise life wise money wise all of it wise and uh and mike said if you're ever in la come and talk to me so i just lied and said oh i'm in la in two weeks coincidentally which was not true at all and i put a plane ticket on a credit card and crashed with some friends out here and went to see mike and i said to him i think he was interested in maybe me doing the videos exclusively for funny or die or something like that which would have been fine except i said i have another idea i want to turn it into a tv show I think I have a vague idea of how this

could work as a half-hour series yeah and Mike liked it and we made a sizzle reel for it to prove how that would work we added some very loose game show elements to it like me giving away small prizes and dollar bills and weird prizes if people cooperated and all of that. And we sort of pitched the idea that there could be a celebrity element with celebrities running around with me, which wasn't in there at the time. Like that Will Ferrell one? Yeah. I mean, now it's what it's known for, but there weren't any celebrities in it. I didn't know any of those people at the time.

An early one was the Will Ferrell one? Will was in it pretty early. The look on the woman's face at the end of that thing. Oh, she's so great. Yeah, she's so great. Could never forget that. And actually in the first... So anyway, so Mike and I pitched as a TV show and we sold it.

And then we made three seasons of half-hour episodes for this very small cable network called Fuse. And then we moved and did seasons four and five on True TV. Yeah. And which were pretty successful. And, you know, the show kept growing and growing. It had a very odd trajectory at like right out of the gate. No one really knew what it was.

We were very under the radar. But I started doing segments for Conan. And I don't know, it just kind of snowballed and we just kept at it. And the video started going viral, these celebrity videos. Yeah. And then after season five,

I said that I think it was enough of half hour episodes. Yeah. So what we're doing now, I wanted to end the half hour episode so that I could do other things. Where was the last network they were on? True TV. Oh true okay and also uh they were on hulu as well right um and so and of course there are there are a million clips on youtube which is how people were really watching it for the most part and so i thought i don't know if i want to keep doing half hour episodes but i also don't want it to go away completely.

And so what we're doing now is we're going to put out a series of eight Billy on the Street short form videos, each with a different celebrity guest between now and a year from now. Funnier Die is producing them. They're going to be on the Internet, on the Billy on the Street YouTube channel, on all of my social media platforms for free. And we're strangely enough doing it in partnership with Lyft. How does that work? So they ponied up and you're going to have Lyft cars featured? No, there are no Lyft cars. It's not a typical brand integration like that. That would be lame. And I can't do that at this point. But they threw in some money or they're- They did. They threw in some money and they're presenting it.

Oh. Which is great. It really worked out perfectly. So this is eight episodes over a year of short form videos. Correct. So what else are you doing? I'm in The Lion King. I know that but that seems like you're... I'm on American Horror Story. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But that Difficult People's done. Difficult

People's done. We love doing that show. Julie wrote on Billy on the Street and that's how we really got to know each other. I've talked to her, and we kind of know each other, but I always think she doesn't like me. But does she do that to a lot of people, or am I the only one? Well, Julie's picky, but she has good taste. Julie's a genius, honestly. And I knew her work from the internet honestly really and then yeah she i think at some point julie had a a tumblr or blog or something this is going way back and of course

she was on twitter and i thought who is this person we had such a similar sensibility but i didn't really know her and then when billy on the street became a tv show i thought oh i need people to help me with this i can't do all this this myself in terms of writing and coming up with bits and questions. And Julie was the first person I emailed and I said, please come work on this with me. And she was a fan and she said yes. And we got really close working on that. And then a couple of years later after doing that, she wrote a pilot that she told me was for her and I to do, which Amy Poehler came on board and that became Difficult People. And we did three seasons of that for Hulu. Yeah. And people love it. Yeah, they did. And why did that stop? You have to ask Hulu that question. Yeah. Hulu's making big decisions. Yeah. Hulu's making lots of decisions.

No, I mean, we loved it. It was a very specific show, and the people who got it really, really got it. And it's sad that it's over. I think it spoke to a certain audience that doesn't really get catered to very much. Sure. No, I think that's true.

Yeah. Difficult people. Yeah, exactly. Selfish, difficult people. Selfish, narcissistic, horny gay men and the women who love them. Yeah. Yeah, it's very specific. So when you act now, I mean, what other projects are coming your way? I mean, The Lion King is a big deal. I mean, that's a voice project. But how did that happen? I mean. The Lion King, Jon Favreau is directing it. And he's a fan of yours? He's a fan of mine. Yeah.

No, I didn't have to audition for it. Favreau got in touch with me way back. He was a pretty early adopter to Billy on the Street. And he was a big fan. And I met him at South by Southwest a number of years ago briefly. And then I've been on his radar, I guess. But the call came completely out of the blue. That was fun.

Yeah, it's pretty great. It's exciting. Very exciting. And I'm doing American Horror Story. I did it last season and I'm on again this season. And it's a great cast of people. Sarah Paulson, obviously. Kathy Bates.

I love Ryan Murphy. You know, so that's a very different type of thing for me to do. And that's really fun. That's like a, I don't even know how that season works. I mean, I don't know how that show works. Is it like, is it different every season? Yes, it's an anthology series. So every year the plot and the characters change,

but there's always some holdover in terms of cast and writers. And the behind the scenes people stay the same, but the characters change and the story changes, the theme, the location and all of that. It's one of those ones where I've heard great things about it, but I can't follow everything. Right, there's a lot of shows out there. God damn it. Too many shows. So what's the big dream now? I mean, outside of yelling at people on the streets

in that show, but I mean, like, would you want to do a big movie where you sort of have a second lead kind of thing? A second lead? My second lead. Yeah, no, I'm actually, I'm working on a movie project right now. You can be the lead if you want.

I don't want to take that away from you. Why would I write a movie where I wasn't the lead? No, I didn't say write. I meant cast. Oh, I'm going to cast myself as the lead too. Okay. So I'm working on a movie project now that I guess will be announced soon. I don't think I can talk about it yet, but it involves people you've heard of.

Hopefully that'll get made. That sounds great. People I've heard of? People you've heard of. Man. I know. Who wants people you haven't heard of? Well, sometimes they're surprising.

Once in a while. Yeah. So I'm working on that. I'm doing my first Netflix special, which will come out next year at some point. Really? Yeah. So how's that? What's that going to be?

That will, in a way, kind of harken back. Harken? Yeah, sure. To the- To my live show. To creation. To creation back. Harken? Yeah, sure. To the creation. To my live show. To creationation. It won't be exactly that. It's not going to be in the form of a talk show,

but it will have variety elements and be very unique to me. You don't have a plan? You don't have a structure? There is a structure. Yeah, I am working on it, but I want to keep it as a surprise. Barbara Streisand? there is a structure. Yeah, I am working on it, but I, you know, I want to keep it as a surprise. Not like a sit, Barbra Streisand is, has a small,

but pivotal role. No, uh, but there, uh, there's no traditional like sit down celebrity interview. Yeah. Might there be cameos?

Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I see. But it's, is it going to be a live stage show?

It will be a stage show. With video elements? With video elements. You know it. I get it. Yeah. So you live out here, right? I do, strangely. Yeah. And how long have you lived out here? Once I got Parks and Rec, I started to come out here a lot. Also, we've always edited Billy on the Street out here because Funny or Die is come out here a lot also we've always edited billy on the street out here because funny or dies based out here yeah so that saved us some money so that brought me out here and i ended up liking it and then american horror story happened that shoots out here so i've been going back and forth a lot for five years and then for the past year i've been out here most of the time obviously going back to shoot occasional Billy on the Street shows.

And also I'm on Friends from College on Netflix. That shoots in New York too. Is that still going? Yeah, we just shot the second season. I'm just recurring on that. You like doing that one? It's very fun. Yeah, I play Fred Savage's boyfriend.

We're a gay couple. Fred's great. He is good. Do you like living here? do it's i mean i grew up in new york city so this is a nice change of pace yeah it's relaxing and all the cliched reasons people like it and fucking learn how to drive dude no but no that's the greatest thing is that i get to live in la and i don't have to do the one thing everyone complains about which is drive you still got to get in a car yeah but I sit there on my phone like a millennial, a wonderful millennial.

Do you have a relationship? I am currently single. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Do you have a relationship? I do. Okay, good.

We don't live together. That's probably good. Yeah. I think it's the best way. Yeah. I agree with you. If they have their own place and they're cool and they're you know they got their own thing going on and you know they it's much better the

best i read an article you know the fashion designer isaac mizrahi yeah this was a few years ago in the new york times and he talked about him and his partner i guess i don't know if they're married um and they live together technically in Manhattan. Obviously, these are wealthy people who are privileged, but they live together but two bedrooms and they don't necessarily sleep together every night and Isaac said, oh, I like to work late at night and he gets up early and I was like, that is ideal. Right.

You know? Let's stop pretending that we're all on the same clock. Yeah, and also like just like what if, I don't know, man. You get older, your habits get more defined. It's sort of like, what do we need to

be up each other's ass all the time? Exactly. It's just annoying. You're just going to end up hating each other. Yeah, there's resentment that builds.

I guess if you have a kid, it's different. Even then, everyone can have their own room. That's true. The kid. Yeah, the kid,

the mom, the dad, whoever's actually raising the kid. Whoever's parenting, however kid. Yeah, the kid, the mom, the dad, whoever's actually raising the kid. Whoever's parenting, however it's situated. Alright, buddy, well it was great talking to you. Thanks for having me. Good luck with the thing. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me? How's GLOW going? Oh, pretty good.

We got picked up for a third season. I saw congrats, and you're nominated for an Emmy. The show is. The show is. Yes. I didn't get a nomination. I'm okay with it. I'm sorry about that. It's all right. I kind of like one, but I think I was-

Did you not get one last year? I got, no. I got, I think these Emmys are still for the- You were nominated for something. A SAG? A SAG. Well, that's good. And a Critics' Choice I got nominated.

Well, that's great. There you go. But these Emmys are still for the first season, right? I mean, this is 2000, because this season just came out back in May. Right, no, right. So it's still for last year, right? For 2017.

That's a good question. I don't know when the cutoff date is. I think you're right about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was better this season. Well, then we'll- The second season.

We'll find out. We'll see. When the Emmy noms are announced for next year. But Liz and Carly, I'll tell them I talked to you. They're fantastic. I know them for a long time. Not well, but I know them. They were around.

Did you go see their plays? I did sometimes, yeah. They're good? They were excellent. Okay. You don't get to write glow for nothing, Mark. Exactly, man. All right, see you later.

Thanks so much. That's it. As I said, look out for more Billy on the Street and also American Horror Story Apocalypse premieres Wednesday, September 12th on FX. That was interesting to see someone who

becomes a very defined comic personality and he just started out as an actor and just found it somehow. That was interesting to see someone who becomes a very defined comic personality and he just started out as an actor and just found it somehow. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Are we going to play? Are we going to play? Yeah, we're going to play.

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