Yes, once in a while, I did after ponder.

Well, if this doesn't happen, what the hell are you going to do?

Because you have to do something?

I still think sometimes maybe I should go to law school.

That's being an actor.

It's terrible business.

Hey, I'm Billy Eichner and this is my career timeline.

Oh boy.

Between Jeremy Todd Ellis, Brian, Margaret and Stephen having fights and Harold, Chris, Kwan, Li and Mic'd up making the football team, I've got a full night's work.

Well, Father, my first imdb credit should be Saturday and I live.

I don't know why it's not Lorne.

I grew up in New York City, and I really wanted to be on Broadway, which never happened.

But I ended up getting auditions for other things, and I remember vividly after school, I got a call from my manager.

She said, Guess what?

Show that you watch every sorry and you're gonna be on this week and I kid you not.

I responded the Golden Girls and she said, no SNL and I was thrilled.

It was very surreal.

They they were like 20 of us kids in the sketch, and we all kind of looked like John Goodman because we were supposed to be playing his Children.

On the musical guest was Garth Brooks.

I remember who was huge at the time, but I was so pissed off because the week before the musical guest was Madonna and I was still am an obsessive Madonna fan.

But especially back then when I was a kid and I just kept walking around thinking Madonna walked in this hallway five days ago and now I have to deal with Garth Brooks.

Not that he's not great, but, you know, Madonna, Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time, Mr and Mrs Jack Fuller.

I remember my agents called me and told me I got it as if I had gotten, like, a huge part in something.

And I literally had one line.

And I think I only got it because the guy they originally cast like howto another work commitment.

But at the time, it felt cool because he knows Cameron Diaz and Ashton.

You know they were stars.

Mrs Egan.

You're Madonna tickets yet?

Hell, no.

Why?

Because I can't afford him.

Why not?

Because I live in New York and I'm gonna be 64 I have no health insurance.

I don't ask for your whole life story.

I got to New York after college, and then I started to write my own live comedy show for the stage, and it was called Creation Nation.

I did it with a friend of mine, Robin Lord Taylor, who's also a successful actor now.

And there was a screen in the theater and I thought, Oh, we can show videos And I had been developing kind of organically this larger than life, irrationally passionate stage persona, this guy who was like, very intensely into the entertainment industry to an extreme, absurd degree.

And I was ranting and raving on stage.

And then I thought, Well, what if I do some version of this outsize and we used to make these little on the street videos to play on the screen in the small theaters I would do my show in and that YouTube came along and eventually they went viral and that's Billy on the street.

I've been shooting some version of Billy on the street since the summer of 2004 and it's now the summer of 2019.

And so this is literally the 15th year I have been shooting Billy on the street for me and as a character.

It's totally a persona, you know, For me, it's always been a satire at the end of the day, of my own obsession with it, with the entertainment industry and the mine.

Ooh sha of it.

Since I was a kid, I have a medical condition, all right.

It's called Caring too much, and it's in Terrible.

Also, I have eczema.

I got a d.

M on Twitter from make sure one day saying, Hey, I think I have a role for you on Parks and rec.

Would you want to do it literally?

That's how that happened.

I have agents and managers and lawyers, and but Twitter ultimately, is how the deal went down.

Twitter, ca NBI, you know, horrible, anxiety inducing war zone.

But in many ways it's also help me.

I mean, I always said I would not have a career without social media in general.

I got to play Craig Middlebrooks, who was almost a Maur intense, an extreme version of Billy on the Street, which is hard to imagine and I came in with a very different energy than the rest of the show, and fans either thought it was the greatest thing that they've ever seen on the show or the worst thing that's ever been on the show, which was interesting.

That's kind of fascinating, but I had a blast and it was wonderful.

And wake up, Dana.

Witches are everywhere.

Oh, here you can try a spell.

It might work.

It might not.

Not everyone is able to do it.

Bob's burgers, I think, was my certainly my first significant recurring voice over all that came to be because my agent repped the creators of Bob's Burgers and he kind of sold them on me.

And I had a following at this point, but not what it is now off, And I think he had educate people on who I was.

Or maybe they knew some of my videos but didn't necessarily know that I wanted to do something beyond Billy on the street.

But yeah, I love Bob's burgers, and I think that character Mr Ambrose, librarian who hates books and hates the kid son some level is just hilarious.

And I love it when, whenever they call me in to do it.

I'm so pleased I'm so happy.

It gives me a great joy to do that role.

Can you believe this free concert?

What a gift.

Like the same kind of music you like Your singing Judy Collins only like Judy Collins, Julie and I were a mutual.

Fans of each other kind of discovered each other online.

Actually, people think we knew each other for years, but we didn't.

When Billy on the Street was sold as a TV show, I had very little time to throw Ah crew together, and Julie was literally one of the first people I called a tow.

Have people writing for me because I couldn't generate all the material by myself, so I needed some help.

But it's weird because it's so specific to my voice and who I am.

Billy on the street and I thought, Who is someone who who's gonna get that?

Julie was the first person I thought of, and I'm so thankful that she said yes.

So she worked on Billy on the street is a writer and a producer, and then she created a show for us, and she wrote the difficult people pilot for me and her to star in an Amy Poehler came on board as an executive producer.

Julie and I always said we were playing dumber versions of ourselves like the Julian Billy on difficult people.

They really want to be rich and famous, but they are very stupid and they're always getting in their own way.

They're so short sighted.

I think there were aspects of it were influenced by who we were as younger, struggling actors.

But beyond that, I think they're very much characters living in their own weird, demented world.

I had Jason Sudeikis on Billy on the Street and Jason when he did.

Billy on the Street talked about how he was going to be starring as the main voice of the Angry Birds movie, and it had a list of 50 actress and every actor in Hollywood was in the Angry Birds movie Jason and My Rudolph, Josh, Gad, all these people.

The list went on and on, and I was the only person not ask to be in the Angry Birds movie, and I'm known for basically being an angry bird, essentially, and I was very, very hurt that I wasn't considered.

And so I'm Billy on the street.

I went off about why I was not asked to be in the angry Birds movie.

And sure enough, the creator of the Angry Birds movie saw it and was like, You know what?

You're right.

You shouldn't be in the Angry Birds movie and then they called and gave me, like, two small parts.

They're gonna threw me into it.

The best part of it was how it came about.

I was like, Oh, that's how I get cast.

I just have to go on Billy on the street and say what role I want and then I get it.

They're your best friends.

For some reason you're right.

They are really great people.

Well, I didn't say that when I got the script, I my inclination was that this character was very different than the other characters I've played.

It seemed to me like Fred Savage is character who played my long term boyfriend.

Read was the one who was the bit of the show off, who was the bit of the life of the party, and Fred himself has such a big personality.

I thought, Oh, it's not it shouldn't be too big.

Personalities together like someone has to be the quieter, Shyer, more awkward one.

And I thought it would be a good opportunity and a good challenge for me to play that.

And I loved doing that character because it's just the opposite of what I'm usually asked to do.

Course.

I watched the wonder years.

I watched it every week with my parents, and I didn't want to bother friend with that too much.

But I think toward, you know, once we got more comfortable with each other, I think at one point I did say, Friend, you understand how weird it is that if we went back in time and you told the 12 year old me watching the wonder years, not only am I going to be doing a show with that person with Kevin Arnold, but that I'm going to be playing his gay husband, I truly would not have believed it.

Murderer.

I murdered someone.

I'm going to jail forever.

Do you understand?

Ryan Murphy came up to me at a Preemies party.

I loved him from afar but didn't know him at all.

And of course, I revered him and he came up to me and said, Oh, you know, I'm a fan.

I think you're very funny And then we started chatting, and that led to a meeting where I basically gave him my background and said, Look, I know people know me as Billy on the street, but I you know, I went to Northwestern and I was a theater major and I wanted to be a real actor, and I think you're one of the few people who might understand that might understand the challenges of that and maybe be turned on by giving me a chance Thio branch out because he's done that for other people.

And he's also been so supportive of LGBT actors in a way that the industry usually is not.

Unfortunately on Dhe he told me in the room in this meeting, he said, Yeah, maybe American horror Story and I said, Sure, but you know, people promise you things all the time, and then the call never comes.

But Ryan is a man of his word, and I think one season later I still have another party, and he said, I have a role for you in American Horror Story and again.

I said, Sure.

Okay, I'll believe it when I see it.

And But he wasn't lying.

He did.

And when I started to read this the our story scripts, I I remembered.

Oh, right.

My goal here is not to figure out how to make this funnier, which is usually my job and on horror story.

It's almost the opposite challenge where you already have these very over the top larger than life.

Hard to believe scenarios, right, cause it's horror and you have to figure out how to ground it and make it seem reels.

And not only that, you're with Sarah Paulson and you're with Kathy Bates and you better not fuck it up.

You know, you have to kind of rise to the occasion.

But they were all great and very, very supported, and I loved it.

I was so happy not to have to be funny.

Oh, no, it's a little alien.

That is not a line.

I'll go check out what it is.

Not a line.

It's a furry burry.

It looks like a lion.

That's not a lot.

Let me get a closer look.

Excuse me.

All right, let me see what we're dealing with here.

It's a lion run for your life.

Wait a little Lorien, who's very surreal.

Full circle moment in a number of ways because I wanted to do musicals and I grew up in New York City going to a lot of Broadway shows.

Nathan Lane is a huge Broadway star.

Even before he did The Lying King, I had see Nathan Lane on Broadway growing up and really worshiped him.

So to get the call to do the role that he made famous originally, that was, uh, that was just shocking and obviously very flattering and surprising and very exciting.

There were no chemistry test.

Lion King.

There were no auditions.

Jon Favreau, I guess, heard our voices in his head when he was thinking about who he wanted to put in the movie, and in a way that made it easier.

Because when the process did get intimidating, you know, you'd think to yourself Well, John put me in this for a reason, and he could have had anyone, literally anyone he wanted in this movie, and he picked up.

So we'll have to trust that we'll do a good job.

We had a big London premiere for The Lying King.

We met Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and she's the first thing she said was, Oh, I've always loved Billy on the street and I said Thank you And she said, Congrats on everything happening in your career and I said Same to you and she said Yes, well, things took an interesting turn, which was funny and she was great.

They were both very down to earth.

I think they go out of their way to be cool and they want to be chill and normal as normal as possible in a very abnormal environment.

I'm always Children normal.

It's honestly my goal with Lion King Waas Just Thio try to rise to the occasion of both who I was working with and who did it originally, and the size and scope an expectation of the movie in general, which was unlike anything I was ever involved in.

I went in to record more than anyone else, and sometimes it was because I would call John and say, I need to come in again.

I think we can get a better line.

I think I can find a better joke, you know, I knew the pressure was on.

I think people were worried about Timonen Poom, but in this version, because the originals are so beloved, so beloved and so the fact that people seem to like what I've done and like what Seth and I have done together, it's very cool.