The One Yiddish Word That Stops the Anxiety Spiral | Billy Eichner

Key Takeaway

Your parents' default mode of unconditional love can be the foundation of your entire career. Billy Eichner traces all his success—creating Billy on the Street, breaking into Hollywood as an unconventional performer—directly back to his parents' unwavering support. They spent what little money they had on Broadway shows and concerts that fed his passion, never suggesting he get a "real job." When he wanted to attend expensive Northwestern instead of staying local, his dad simply said, "We'll make it happen." That confidence to be authentically yourself, especially in a cutthroat industry, doesn't come from nowhere—it comes from people who loved you exactly as you were.

Episode Overview

Billy Eichner discusses his audio memoir 'Billy on Billy,' revealing the person behind his high-energy Billy on the Street persona. He explores his complicated relationship with that character, his parents' extraordinary support of his theatrical ambitions despite limited means, and how their unconditional love—particularly his father's acceptance of his gay son during the AIDS crisis—gave him the confidence to succeed in Hollywood as an unconventional performer.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The One Yiddish Word That Stops the Anxiety Spiral | Billy Eichner from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey, welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we are talking to Billy Iikner, who you probably know from Billy on the Street, Parks and Wreck Bros. He's out with a new audio memoir. It's called Billy on Billy. Billy Iikner, right after this break. A few 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.

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I know I said a lot, but I do hope you'll come check it out. You can sign up at danharris.com. Again, that's danharris.com. danharris.com. danharris.com. Uh 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. this. this. Billy Agner, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you. I'm very excited to talk to you. Let me quote you back to you. Oh god. Uh this is from the book which again is called uh 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. Um, that's almost like a standup kind of standup comedy rant that came out of my brain because like everyone, I spend way too much time on social media and on Instagram in particular.

And then in the past few years, it just feels like everyone has decided that they are a self-help guru with a lot of advice to share. And and look, I'm not saying some of Take this as a personal attack. No, no, no, no. Because you're you're you're an intelligent person and you have the chops. You know, we know what your background is, right? Some of these people are just were sitting in their house one day and decided, I know what I'm gonna do. tell some tell everyone else how to live their lives even though I haven't had a job for 30 years.

You know what I mean? I know I'm sure some of them are lovely people. And again, it's not that all the advice is bad. I take some of the advice sometimes. Sometimes I'll see something and say, you know what, I'm 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 yet, there's so much of it. It's an avalanche of self-help. And so I just wanted people to know in my book right off the bat that like I say in my book, if your parents hated you, this book will not change that. change that. change that. There's, you know, I'm telling you my story. I now I will say I've had people who have listened to the book who've said, you know, Billy, it actually is a helpful book and it is an inspiring book.

So on some level, I'm just being funny when I say that. But yeah, there's a lot of self-help out there and you've got to pick and choose who to listen to. 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. Um, [clears throat] 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 the the that I'm looking at it.

Yes. Well, that 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. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I have a real therapist in real life and I'm and now people are going to chat PT and all of these other uh smart bot apps, whatever you call them, um to like ask for more advice. And it's just it's just a lot of advice. And I think at some point you have to say to yourself, and by the way, I do this with myself because like you're saying, I'm being served this because I'm looking at it, but I need to take a moment.

I need to check myself and say, "All right, shut the [ __ ] up and [clears throat] 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. enough. enough. And it becomes narcissistic in a way. Yes. It's naval gazing. Exactly. You asked me before the interview to keep an eye on your posture. posture. posture. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah, my posture becomes terrible in these interviews and then, you know, I I go on YouTube and I look like a hunchback or something, you know.

No offense to hunchbacks. Don't I don't want the hunchback community to cancel me. cancel me. cancel me. Don't at me, you know. But yes, thank you for reminding me to have good I'll keep an eye on it for I got your back. You do, however, um, and this this hits close to home for me in the preface to the book, you do take some pot shots at, uh, my, uh, business, which is meditation. And I'm going to quote you back to you again. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, no. I don't know. I don't know about you, but if it gets to the point that someone is telling me I just need to calm down and focus on my breathing of all mundane things, I know that something in my life must have gone terribly wrong. Meditation is I mean, it's just so sad. What's your beef? 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 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. And so, 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 you sit down and meditate, you're bombarded by too many random thoughts. The problem is that there's one very uh salient thought that comes up in your mind when you're meditating, which is you're only doing this because you're so [ __ ] up right now.

That's right. You're disappointed. You 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 old 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. 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 med for me meditation has been helpful as something to do consistently in good times and bad so 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. Um, 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. Um, and I never really had I think I 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 um because she had what I considered to be a substance abuse problem that ultimately in my mind uh 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 therapylike 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 Pool. And I came into Northwestern as this native New York kid, kind of a know-it-all, really wanted to be a good actor, but also had this kind of like smart alaky energy about me. Could you imagine based on my work? Um 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 I was a teenager coming from New York City and I had kind of an attitude and um 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 um 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. Um, 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'm I was immediately struck and I guess I shouldn't be surprised by how different you are from Billy on the street or Billy uh who shows up in uh Parks and Rack.

Rack. Rack. That's right. And that's a big reason why I wrote the book. And I think this I say this in the prologue too or maybe at the beginning of the first chapter. I love Billy on the Street. I created it. It gave me an amazing life. I love that character. I love how much people love the character. Every day there's people on social media begging me to do it more and do it again and 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. book. book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not the real me. And I think you get to an age I I did my first Billy on the Street video for my stage show. I had a live sketch comedy show in New York started in 2003. And the first video I made, YouTube wasn't even around. We made this video to project on a screen in the theater we were playing in. I went around and talked to people on the street and my friend Jamie who was directing the show, we had gone to Northwestern together.

He helped me edit the video and we projected it onto a screen and I had been developing this persona, this highintensity 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 we did this segment on the street where I kind of did the did that character but made people deal with me. And from the second we showed it, the audience fell apart laughing.

That was in September 2004. Then YouTube comes along, the videos start to go viral, I get a TV show in 2011, that takes off and then everything kind of snowballed after that. So that's a character though that I created when I was 25 years old and I'm 47 and people are still asking me to do it all the time which occasionally I'm happy to do but you also get to a point I think at this stage of life where you want people to know that you're a real person you know and I have had a handful of acting opportunities where I got to play different types of characters and more multi-dimensional people that seemed more grounded and more human and more relatable, but I'm still mostly known as Billy on the Street.

And I I guess I have a little bit of a complicated relationship with that because I love it and I love the show, but I'm at the point where I want people to know that I'm a real person. So, in in some ways, is the is the book a career move in that you you might get different roles if people have a more holistic view of you? I think maybe partially, yeah, I think it's an emotional move for my own peace of mind to be able to put something out in the world because I think it was starting, like I said, I'm I'm a very middle-aged man at the age of 47.

I'm a very adult person. And person. And person. And you have no gray hair. Uh, I have a little gray hair. Um, it gets sprayed out for things like this sometimes, although I like my gray hair. I'm the only person in Hollywood looking forward to looking older because I want to differentiate myself from what came before. before. before. I see. I see. I see. You know, um 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 I love that guy. I just consider it one character out of many that I could play. You know, when I was in college, Billy on the Street wasn't even I didn't even know what that was, you know. Um, that idea came along later in my 20s when I was a very serious student in acting class and I said I had this amazing teacher. If you ask the kids in Northwestern who saw me performing, you know what I was doing?

I was doing Czechov and Shakespeare and and Angels in America and musicals. I was in the musical theater program and it was so eclectic and I really took it seriously and I was doing scenes from you know Harold Pinter betrayal and and you know what you do in acting class you know um 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 emulate, you know, whose career would you want?

And I said Kevin Klein. And again, don't cancel me, Kevin Spacy, 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. Was we were middle- class people. We were not rich, but what we had, we spent on entertainment. And especially we loved the theater Broadway off off Broadway.

From the time I was a young kid, they treated me like an adult, right? And I was so passionate about it. And the more passionate I got about it, they got about it. And so I was exposed to very sophisticated things for a kid, you know, and that's what made me want to be an actor. It was seeing those plays, you know, there was a whole wave of gay male playwrights in the late 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, as you're speaking, my head is spinning a little bit thinking about the fact that this this impulse on your part is, I think, a universal thing. Like we all get pipe cast. That's right. That's right. 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 backs backs like like like we are all in in a work context in a prof in our personal lives like we're kind of put in a box and your desire or 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 and I've had some opportunities.

I think bros was a good step in that direction. Um, that's a very complicated, multi-dimensional character that I got to write and and play in that. Um, I did American Crime Story where I played Matt Drudge, who created the Drudge Report. Clearly, that's not Billy on the Street. That's an entirely different living human being, also a very complicated man. So, I think certain people know who've been watching closely. But again, there is one persona that I created that people love that seems to dominate people's image of me.

And again, I I want to be clear that I love that persona. This is about building on that and expanding on that. And also um 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 uh authentic version of myself before my career took off. Interestingly enough, even though all I wanted was for my career to take off, but now I'm looking back and I'm thinking, "Oh, I just want to get back to who I am or at least give it a shot before it's too late." a question about well first a comment and then a question related to Billy on the street although we're not going to go s 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 uh and I do Dan and I do too.

So if your algorithm is saying that you need self-help mine is saying uh that I love Billy on the street because your stuff is served up to me all I know a lot of people say that to me. I never know whether to say thank you or apologize, but uh I I that does mean a lot to me. It's it's such a in some ways like I I have so many resentful feelings about our lives being dominated by these algorithms, but they really do tell you a lot because it's learning about you so that it can hook you.

And uh yeah, I get a lot of Billy on the street, which makes me smile. I get um 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. An otter. Oh, I didn't know what what's an otter. Excuse me. How dare [clears throat] you, Dan? No, but I'm I'm proud of you for know.

Bears are like another division of otter. 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. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Now, of course, in our new world, there are divisions of bears. So, you can have an otter. An otter is like a younger bear, maybe more lean than a bear. Kind of like a hairy, lean, athletic guy, I think. think. think. So, like a twink version of a bear.

That's right. Good for you. How am I doing? Am I doing all right? Yes. Yeah. A twink bear. Yeah. Okay. like a twunk there or something like that. like that. like that. Let's get back to Billy and you've referenced this a couple times. In terms of Billy on the street, the 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.

I think it's a it's a heightened version of who I was as a kid. of who I was as a kid. And to me, Billy on the Street really is kind of like a manchild character. You know, one of my biggest influences was Peewee Herman. Um, who if you grew up in the 80s like I did, I was obsessed with Peewee 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 satarize my own extreme overextreme extreme overextreme extreme overextreme interest in the entertainment industry, you know? And so I thought, well, what if I play like the most intense version of a guy who just 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 Winslett's career choices or the Oscars or Merryill Streep, sorry, Merryill Streep or whoever it might be, you know, a pop singer, Madonna, whatever it In the book, you talk about the fact that your parents really kind of h were and you referenced this earlier in this conversation that your parents like aided and emedded this interest.

interest. interest. Oh yeah. And so much of the book for me the book is mainly a love letter to my parents um Jay and Debbie Iikner who this was the 80s and 90s. They knew I'm pretty sure that they had a a gay kid. Um even before I came out it was pretty obvious. And remember, we 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 Stryand'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 5-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 a, you know, whether someone likes my work or not, I would say my success, and I've had a fair amount of success, especially for an unconventional kind of person in in a very cutthroat industry in Hollywood. Like all of my success can be traced back to the fact that my parents, Jay and Debbie Iikner, their default mode was always to just love the hell out of their kid.

And if anyone takes anything away from the book, I I hope it's that taking nothing away from mothers because mothers are amazing. There is something in my experience special about a father's love. father's love. 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 Stryisan and they took me and they weren't rich but they used what they had. I was an only child, so I benefited from that. But and they would take me into the city and we went to see 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 shame about being gay than I think a lot of gay men do. Unfortunately, I'm not saying I 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. remarkable thing. remarkable thing. It's beautiful. Really is. And 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 to do what you did with that first big break of yours. yours. yours. That's a very nice way of putting it.

Thank you. And and and that's why the book is so much about my parents and the book was such a gift to me. And it forced me to sit down, which I probably wouldn't have done, you know, unless I had a reason to, which was that someone made me an offer and I took it to write a book about my childhood. They didn't say that it had to be about my childhood. All the publisher said was, "We want it to be personal. We want it to be non-fiction 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 into the audition room. I I'm a fine looking person, but by Hollywood standards, you know, what gave me the hutbah, 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 their mentality and it wasn't a mentality I think I say in the book. So many other parents would have said this is a lovely hobby for you. Go get a real job. We don't have the money to like back you up here. But they just didn't feel that way. They always felt like we are going to do whatever it takes to give you a shot.

And I talk about this in the book, how my dad, I think he had a little bit of a hangup. 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 hangup 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 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 is a tribute to that. Let me ask you about your mother. Um you write and I find this um very amusing in the book. uh you say that tragically for a memoir writer you possess and this is the quote uh audio book only levels of childhood trauma.

That being said, there are there is in particular one really searing memory uh where you witnessed the aftermath of of a fight they had. Can you talk about that? I think you saw your mother in the kitchen after a fight. fight. 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. Um, 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 offagain addiction to uh 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 um which leads to her having a heart attack when I was in college uh which I talk about in the book.

Um but before that taking those pills would make her very emotional and a bit more overreactive right than she usually was. So, it would cause a lot of like fights between her and my dad. And when she wasn't on the pills, they would never fight. And when she was on the pills, she was fighting with everyone. However, if I'm being honest, the pills also allowed her, I think, to express some of the pain she had in a way she couldn't uh 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 was my dad, as you'll hear in the book, is a very loving man, but stoic. You know, my dad was in the Korean War. He was older than my mom. It's a different generation of of straight men, and he wasn't as great overtly with the emotional stuff. Um, my mom would always get annoyed with him because he wouldn't show me much physical affection.

physical affection. physical affection. Um, I didn't care because I could always tell it was so obvious my dad loved me, but she wanted to see my my mom being like a Jewish mother had like so my god, she was constantly hugging me and kissing and and everyone, you know, she was like this uh just it was a flood of affection constantly. You know, I say in the book, my mom's love was like the sphere in Vegas. It was an immersive theatrical experience. It was all over me and under me, you know, at all times.

And that was wonderful. My dad was the opposite. He wasn't as physically demonstrative and that would piss her off sometimes. So, they had this fight and I witnessed my mom, I must 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 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. Um, she was crying to herself. She was saying, crying out to my dad like, "Can't you see I'm lonely. I'm sad." I'm sad." I'm sad." And, um, he did not respond. And I witnessed that as a kid. And part of me was mad because I 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 mo maybe all kids do. I don't know. I was never another kid. But um I I could see her. It was almost like I was watching her as one of these characters in one of these more adult movies I'd watched, like a Woody Allen movie or or something a bit more sophisticated where you were dealing with midlife people in pain or something.

And I could tell that the emotions she was expressing were honest and I had never heard her say that before and that stuck with me. 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. way. 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 uh antagonism she would uh 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, 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. You know, she was in more pain than she was willing to admit emotionally, which is why 10 years later, I get to college and I come home and I try to convince her. I'm desperate to convince her to see a therapist. We didn't talk about mental health as much in those days. And you know, my mother and a lot of people in that time thought only crazy people go to therapy, you know, and [snorts] 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. happier. happier. Wow. Wow. 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 act act but I I think she was very resistant to openly discussing openly discussing openly discussing anything that she didn't feel great about.

about. about. Yeah, people are complicated. That vulnerability, she didn't want to admit it out loud. It's hard to admit out loud. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. as you said at the beginning of this uh conversation and you say in the beginning of your new audio book um uh 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. Uh maybe you can tell the story of what she said to you at your bar mitzvah when you were freaking out.

freaking out. freaking out. Yeah. So I talk about my bar mitzvah party a lot in the book. Um, I being a young culture obsessed gay child, I art directed my bar mitzvah reception as if it was the frigin Met Gala. I mean, I acted like I was Truman Capony planting 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. Um, but I was so intense about it and again my parents let me lead the way, you know, and I had this creative vision for my bar mitzvah party and I wanted it to be the theme was Broadway meets pop because I couldn't decide which one I liked more.

So there was a large life-siz portrait of Madonna in her comb 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. All right, we're not in Manhattan here. Um, my parents let me do it. And all the kids tables were were named after pop stars.

Mine 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 tunes so that it would be more more adult and sophisticated and it would take you on like an emotional journey. Please. You know, again, I thought I was like putting together like a pop concert here, right?

Or like a Broadway show. So, I'm looking around and it's kind of the towards the beginning, maybe getting into the middle of my bar mitzvah and I am freaking [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] 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 which and that list in included like some obscure show tunes that your typical bar mitzvah DJ would not have had on hand right so they weren't playing the right songs and my vision wasn't being seen through and I ran over to my mother and I basically had a breakdown and I said after all my months of planning like people aren't dancing, they're not playing the right songs, no one's having a good time and I just panic as this young gay kid who's you know artistic dreams seem to be falling apart right in real time and my mother who was always so warm and loving kind of took an unusual for her tone and She kneelled down in a very loving but pointed way and she looked at me and said, "This party is amazing.

Everyone's having a great time. It's just getting started. People are dancing. They're going to be dancing more." She said, "Please, you have to have a good time. You have to have fun here. Please don't be crazy. You have to have fun." And that really stayed with me, you know. And I and I think about that too even now like decades later when I'm getting stressed about work or things aren't going right. I I think about my mom saying that to me 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 I do have fun. But I think part of that is like my mom having given me that advice like at such an early age, you know.

And I recently to pull clips to promote my book. I recently watched my bar mitzvah video, which of course was on VHS because it was 1991. And I had it converted to a digital file, which is so funny. Now my bar mitzvah video is just in my phone. So after not really watching it for decades, I can now look at it every single day. And I was looking at my bar mitzvah video and I and I had already written the book and talked about how stressed I was at my bar mitzvah and how much it meant to me that it looked exactly the way I wanted it to look and etc.

And then I rewatched the video the video the video and I look stressed out. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] I look so stressed, you know, and I'm like this fat, sweaty Jewish kid, right? And I supposed to be my big day. And it's funny cuz behind the scenes, I thought I was such a player, you know? I thought I was like I think I say in the book, I I was like, you know, Luca Guaginho, 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 what was the question? question? question? I forget what you said. I [clears throat] was just I didn't even ask a question.

I just said Oh, I just started talking. I just was saying that u 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 [ __ ] that I trudge through life. I, as you say, white knuckle through life. And so it's really helpful to be reminded internally through a story or externally by somebody else, yo, this thing's moving fast. like you should enjoy it as Ferris Buer, you know, like know, like know, like absolutely and because my mom died when I was 20 and then my dad dies uh later in my life, but he dies one month before Billy on the Street becomes a TV show.

So, he doesn't see any of my career happen for me, even though he wanted it for me so badly. So, because of that though, I do have a very tangible feeling of life is short just isn't like a theoretical thing in my head. I can feel it, you know, I've seen it with my own eyes. And so I do try to have a good time and it is a great reminder. And I think a lot of us are white knuckling through things all the time and we may not even realize it because we've gotten so used to it.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And so I have to remind myself now like lighten the [ __ ] 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 freaking Zenaia 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. Uh I had a grandmother who spoke Yiddish, but I never heard this term ganug. Is that it? Ganug. Ganug. Ganug. Ganug is how my dad would say it.

But sometimes he would say they would say a lot of Yiddish words but in their own way. So I don't know the correct pronunciation but as a kid my dad would always say gnug meaning enough and he would my dad would he would say it occasionally and uh 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 he called them lonely weirdos. They were like freakish aliens to him that they were on treadmills.

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 '8s now. Now we're all like fitness crazed, but like it was so funny to me. So my dad, he wasn't hugely overweight, but he had the gut, you know, and he would eat and eat and eat. And then every night, he almost every night, he would have like two scoops of ice cream for dessert. But then I would watch him and he would almost like kind of gently throw the utensils down.

Not in like a violent way, but just like a put them down it with intent like intently and then mutter to himself gnoo. 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. Ganug, Ganug, Ganug, 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 you're you're spiraling out of control in wanting something.

something. something. Yeah. I mean, I try. It doesn't always help, but yeah, I remember those two things actually. My mom saying, "Have fun. You don't be crazy. You have to have fun. Don't stop being so crazy. It's so funny to me because it was my bar mitzvah party. Stop being so crazy. People will dance, you know. Um that's that stuck with me. My what really stays with me about my dad is he was this guy from the Bronx. If you know the actor Alan Arin, who passed away I think recently, he was also from the Bronx and around my dad's age.

Like Alan Arin and Little Miss Sunshine was very much my dad. Um, and if you're looking for a visual, and my dad had this just instinctive instinctive instinctive hatred of [ __ ] of anything that read to him or felt like [ __ ] or affectation or artifice, right? And that really is a part of who I am. And my mother too, we did not like affectation. We loved a great performance on stage. That was our favorite thing. But in real life, if someone seemed overly affected or pretentious or pretentious or pretentious or something, we had we were like New Yorkers who had no time for that.

How have you survived in Hollywood? It seemed 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 [ __ ] has not served me well in my industry of choice. Um, and one I think I'm really good about my work creatively. Well, you know, we all have things that are better or things that are a little less good, but I think overall I'm proud of my work.

I 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 schmooziness of it all. I can turn it on when I need to, to, 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, famous person, famous person, but I don't give a [ __ ] I just wanted to do off Broadway plays and somehow Billy on the street took off and it led to all these really wonderful exciting TV and film opportunities.

I am telling you a life in the theater for me that would be number one you know and it's strangely the one thing I like haven't done. I I hope to do it. But so for me, if I've lost opportunities because I I've been a little impolitic or whatever or I've spoken out of line or someone thought I was speaking out of line or I was a little too brash for someone someone someone that's just going to have to be okay cuz I have to live with myself.

I [clears throat] have to say as we wind down here um in my little focus group, everybody I brag to about the fact that you're coming on the show knew who you were. So, were. So, were. So, oh, that's nice. Before I let you go, anything you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to? to? to? One thing I'm surprised you didn't ask me because everyone else does is why only an audio book? 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.

street voice. street voice. Um, and I thought this would be a nice way of doing that. I also 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. to. 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 audio book on May 19th. Spotify, Audible, Apple, independent audio book sellers everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. I've loved meeting you. Thank you for doing this. doing this. doing this. Thank you so much. I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Uh 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. 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 Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Uh, head on over, please, to danh 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.