Billy Eichner doesn’t think he’ll ever go back to making Billy On The Street as a TV show
The concept might come back for "special occasions," but not as a full TV show
Aux News Billy
In a new interview with Rolling Stone tied to his upcoming film Bros, Billy Eichner essentially admitted that he won’t ever be going back to Billy On The Street—his internet video series that became a full-length TV show that then became a not-full-length TV show—but not because he’s a big-shot actor and screenwriter now (or at least not explicitly because of that).
The premise of Billy On The Street was largely summed up by its title, with Eichner running around the streets of New York with a microphone and a camera, putting people on the spot with hard-hitting prompts like “name three white people” or presenting them with trivia questions that were really designed to let him share his wide-ranging pop culture opinions. Basically, the show was designed to be a trap, both for random passersby and for Eichner’s celebrity guests, and the game of it was seeing how people (and Eichner himself) react to the trap.
Of course, as Eichner noted to Rolling Stone, the entire show is “obviously” not “COVID-friendly,” since it’s all about getting right up in strangers’ faces, screaming “Denzel Washington was not in The Phantom Of The Opera,” and then presenting Lena Dunham with some kind of hilariously unwieldy prize. There’s a lot of opportunities there to get particles on somebody.
Anyway, Eichner says that he might bring it back some day for “special occasions,” but he has “moved beyond it creatively.” But it really seems like that’s less about his movie career and more about the fact that he started doing it nearly 20 years ago. “People don’t realize but the first Billy On The Street-style video I made was for my life show in September of 2004,” he told Rolling Stone. “It predates YouTube!”
Eichner also mentioned that he knows Billy On The Street clips have been blowing up on TikTok, which really does seem like the ideal modern format for this kind of comedy. Everybody’s always screaming about naming three white people on there.
16 Comments
I like his character on Bob’s Burgers.
My favorite bit was when he would say something inexplicable, and if the person reacted with surprise or disapproval he would repeat the same thing in an increasingly frantic tone. Also, there’s nothing more 2010s than the line, “Do you think Michelle Bundchen gets Portlandia?”
Gisele?
McCloud?
It is the best show about New York City ever made.
I very much agree.
Is the city itself the real star of the show?
IT’S DEBRA MESSING YOU GAYS!The Debra Messing bits are my favorites, but the one with Michelle Obama and Big Bird always cracks me up. Especially when Michelle just loses it and starts laughing. Also, Elena! <3
“Billy on the Street” is impossible to turn off.
Not only have I never heard of Billy on the Street, I’ve never even heard of “Fuse TV” that it aired on. Weird news article, acting like there’s concern over the future of whatever this is.
We’ve been catching up on ACS: Impeachment and are really enjoying his take on the absolutely insufferable Matt Drudge. Just magnetically creepy all the way through.
underrated part of this show is how many random entities eichner was able to get to pay for and air this thing. funny or die, fuse, trutv and apparently something called lyft entertainment (yes, that lyft).anyway, this feels more like a time capsule than anything, that being said i would like to see eichner completely alpha all these other youtube/tiktok prank interviewers.
Billy Off the Street
Would love to see Billy get in the Cash Cab. There would be blood.
Seems ripe for a metatexual feature film.
Kind of figured that would be the case. Of any show around that one was the one most dependent on the pre-pandemic world, and it’s going to be a long while before something like it makes sense again.