Billy Eichner Secretly Hated Finding Success With ‘Billy on the Street’: ‘It Did Not Come Naturally for Me’ | Video

Billy Eichner shared on Wednesday he was not exactly thrilled when “Billy on the Street” took off — so much so, he was disappointed he had to keep doing it because he is “pretty shy.”

The “Lion King” actor stopped by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s SiriusXM podcast “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” and talked about what it was like hosting the hit comedy show. The show got its start in quite the unlikely place — the basement of a Jewish community center.

“We would make these videos and then show them as part of my show on a screen,” the actor told host Ted Danson. “This was before YouTube. The first ‘Billy on the Street’ video I made was in September of 2004 for a one-off show I was doing in the basement of a Jewish center on the Upper West Side.”

The actor continued to explain the 90-minute show was full of various sketches and songs. Eichner said it was “like a variety show where I’m the only act” and that eventually one of the sketches they tried was the street format. Danson immediately asked what the audience thought of that first segment.

You can watch the full interview clip below:

“It killed,” Eichner quickly added. “And probably, if I watch that version of it now, we didn’t know what we were doing with editing. We were theater kids. We didn’t know about cameras. We don’t have iPhones at this point. We had to teach ourselves how to edit on a big desktop, and we just did it in order to make these videos for my live show.”

“The audience … they were, like, falling out of their chairs, and it’s a really cynical, smart New York audience that was following me at this point,” the actor said of the initial reaction to the sketch. “So to impress them and to shock them meant something. And I swear, that first night, I saw the audience reaction to that, and I thought, ‘Oh, f–k. I’m going to have to keep doing this,’ ’cause it’s a bitch to do and it did not come naturally to me. I know it’s such a cliched comedian thing to say, but I am not that person. I’m pretty shy.” 

Danson said he believed that the reason the show’s concept worked was because Eichner was mild-mannered. “If you were an abrasive, nasty, loud person, you could not be funny doing that,” the host added. “And I imagine, you wouldn’t have the self-awareness.”

Eichner agreed and said that the first time he shot the video in 2004 he had to work up the courage to really commit. “I had to circle Washington Square Park four times before I worked up the nerve to talk to anyone, let alone shout at them,” the actor said. “I was just talking to them at this point because I had not fully leaned into the character yet. So it did not come naturally to me.” 

You can watch the full “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” episode here.

The post Billy Eichner Secretly Hated Finding Success With ‘Billy on the Street’: ‘It Did Not Come Naturally for Me’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.