A biography for Billy Eichnerhasn’t been written yet.
“I was very much an only child who was raised by the television and movies, and I grew up in New York. We weren't, like, rich people, but we were middle-class people and my parents supported this love I had for entertainment.”
“My mom had a heart attack, and it came out of nowhere - she was 54. My dad had leukemia for about 3 months. He was 80 when he passed. My dad had me later in life, and so he had leukemia and was alive for about 3 months between diagnosis and passing away.”
“All that social media hyperbole is just so fake.”
“I took the Oscars very seriously as a child.”
“My favorite Tyler Perry movie? Ugh, how can you decide? For me, it's basically like: Kurosawa, Tyler Perry, Martin Scorsese, in that order.”
“I was a terrible waiter.”
“I was obsessed with award shows and made charts and graphs and stuff when I was 7 years old. I found the entertainment business hilarious, ridiculous, and alluring - and my parents supported it, for better or worse.”
“If you're pretty, you want to be ugly. If you're loud, you want to play quiet. You always want to challenge people's expectations.”
“Anytime you're the creative force behind something and in front of the camera - we're not complaining, but it is an avalanche of work.”
“I think 'Billy on the Street' is a big show, but why do a show if you won't make it original and unique and powerful?”
“I do take for granted, probably, the fact that I grew up in New York City, one of the most liberal places on earth, with bleeding-heart, liberal parents who took me to see 'Rent' and Terrence McNally plays from a very young age.”
“I've never even been invited to the GLAAD awards, to sit in the audience. I don't necessarily care, and I'm sure they will one day, and it will be fine, but I've never been invited to anything like that.”
“I loved 'Solid Gold!'”
“I was like a fat, sweaty kid growing up in Queens who just was plopped down in front of 'Entertainment Tonight' by my parents.”
“I came back to New York after college like any number of struggling performers, and you just find that niche where you can have some sort of impact. And for me that turned out to be comedy.”
“Even when I was struggling and had horrible day jobs and wanted to be successful but wasn't finding my way in, I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to keep working at it and keep putting material out there, even if no one was paying me for it.”
“The 'Billy On The Street' persona is truly inspired by who I was as a child - obviously not having an adult perspective on the world.”
“Facebook is weird. They have all of these seemingly random rules that I'm sure make sense to them, but don't make sense to me or any people.”
“I'm on all the apps: Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Scruff. I have no shame about that.”
“Our pop cultural likes and dislikes are still very segregated, and that is not true of 'Billy on the Street.'”