There's so many people out there
that would look at you right now,
coming out with this movie
and having the career that you have,
that would say, "Okay, Billy.
How do I get where you are?
How do I achieve what you've achieved?"
And one of the things that you've done,
that I'm a big believer in, is that you took control.
You. There's so many people that say, well,
I'm just gonna put myself out there as an actor.
And I'm gonna put my headshot out there
and I'm gonna go to auditions.
And it's a very passive way to approach this business.
And I was always comfortable with anything that,
where I could use some of my abilities
to control the situation a little bit.
As a writer,
as someone who could think of something for myself.
And I look at you and I think, you,
with Billy on the Street,
and because you existed at a time of, you know,
social media, YouTube.
You were able to create something yourself
that gave you all these other opportunities.
Yeah. For sure.
I mean, I started out, you know, I went to Northwestern.
I was a theater major, you know,
I just wanted to be kind of a typical actor.
I never even thought of myself as a writer or a comedian.
Then I got to New York.
I mean, I grew up in New York,
and then after college went back to New York
to start my career quote unquote.
And, you know,
there's millions of people trying to be actors.
And I realized very early on that if I just stood in line
waiting at this open call with hundreds of other actors
for like the regional tour of Brigadoon, or whatever it was,
which I didn't even want to do, although shout out
to the everyone in the cast of the regional tour of
Brigadoon. They're wonderful.
I don't want to do what you're doing, but shout out.
Yeah.
I find the way you spent your life a waste of time.
That's not what I said. (Laughter)
But, here's your props.
That is not what I said
but it's just not what I wanted to do.
Yes. Yeah. A never ending purgatory.
No, I'm kidding, please. This is on me now. Not on you.
I no, seriously.
I love, I love the current touring cast of Brigadoon.
No, I don't know if that's even touring right now.
But I'm not here to talk about Brigadoon.
(Exuberant laughter)
Let me get this straight. So Billy's new
movie's called Brigadoon.
It's about a magical land. Wait a minute, I got that wrong.
So I, I basically started to write for myself and
and I was good at it.
And I had a live stage show that I did in New York
which is where the Billy on the street video started.
I would show those videos on a screen.
This is before YouTube even existed.
This is like 2004, 2005.
But then an interesting thing happened where a lot of folks
in the industry would come and they would acknowledge
that I was talented or that they thought I was funny,
that the audience was laughing a lot, that I was unique
and this, that, and the other thing.
But it was always, you know, we don't know what to do
with you.
Right.
Or you're very New York.
And a lot of times in both overt ways and subtle ways,
I was sent the message that I, I was just too gay.
Yeah.
Right, I was being openly gay on stage.
I was talking about gay sex.
Now everyone's talking about gay sex, but this is 2003.
Right?
This, this is back when you were losing roles
to dinosaurs.
Exactly. Dinosaurs were fucking on screen
but I wasn't allowed to.
(Exuberant Laughing)
Okay. Brontosaurus on Stegosaurus was fine.
Yeah. That was fine.
A lot of fanboys jerking off to that.
But two actual humans having sex who happened to
be men was alienating.
So that message was sent to me many times.
Uh-huh.
But then what happened was the internet came along
and I put my videos online.
And after a little while they went viral and very viral.
And I was able to point to all of those people
in the industry and say, hey, I'm not too this
or too that.
This video has millions of views.
Right.
These views, aren't coming exclusively from gay people
watching a New York city.
Look at the comments they're coming
from all over the country and all over the world.
And that's when they finally put me on TV.
I needed those numbers to point to and say hey,
I have proof that I am not this little niche
thing that you assume I am because I'm gay.
Do you ever think about
let's say somehow there's a, whatever, wrinkle
in time and you're born in the thirties
or whatever you come of age in the forties or 1950s.
And you have all the talent
and ability you have now, but there's no internet.
There's no, there's no YouTube.
There's no way to you yourself take control.
Do you know what you would've become?
I don't know.
You know, I think about that all the time.
And you know, it's just
and that weighed really heavily on me during the movie.
And if you see the movie
I don't want to give it away, but I do speak
to this at one point, you know, I'm 43 years old.
So when the movie comes out, I'll be 44.
So I'm kind of in this interesting midway point
between a generation of LGBTQ people
and gay men specifically who really saw the world change
like when they grew up, it was such a repressed time.
They, a lot of them probably,
probably can't even imagine the world that we live in today.
You know, even though there are still problems
and we're still fighting for our rights, still
the evolution that has occurred is really remarkable, right?
They live through the AIDS epidemic.
There's a lot to unpack there.
Then you have a younger generation now
and you see them all over the place
of LGBTQ people and Gen Z queer kids. Which is amazing
but they stepped into such a different world, such an
an evolved accepting world.
And again, a world where, thanks
to Clarence Thomas and other like fucked up
up homophobic, you know, self-loathing weirdos.
Like we're still fighting for our rights
and our rights are still very fragile.
But again, that generation, a lot to do
with the internet, you know, came of age in a time when
you know, things were, if not easy, a lot easier.
And I'm kind of weirdly perched in
between these two generations that have had a very
different experience being LGBTQ.
And I wanted the movie to speak
to that in a way, because we need to acknowledge.
And by the way, I'm making the movie sound like fuckin'
you know, out of Africa or something like, it's like,
it sounds so fucking serious.
This is a funny, Judd Apatow movie everybody
It's dinosaurs, it's Sonic the Hedgehog.
It's everything you want it to be.
But just speaking about it seriously for, for a moment
cause it is a historic movie, you know
you do have to acknowledge those generations
of people. And Hollywood, especially, an industry
which has so often patted itself
on the back for being progressive
and gay friendly, quote unquote, you know, Holly-,
it's a cliche to say that like everyone in Hollywood is gay.
You know, that it's this progressive lefty,
you know, culture.
But really when you look at the actual history of it
just voting for a Democrat doesn't mean
that you are treating LGBTQ people correctly
on the day to day.
And what you see in Hollywood are generations
of actors who were stuck with one of two choices.
Be incredibly bold and come out of the closet publicly
and have your professional dreams disappear.
Because Hollywood did not give opportunities to people.
They did not believe gay could play straight.
They did not believe gay people want like, that the majority
of the audience wanted to see gay people at all.
They made people uncomfortable.
If you did get a role, it was horri- horribly stereotypical.
You were the butt of the joke.
And that was for many years
the best you were gonna do.
Right.
Or you had to live some Rock Hudson style life.
Where if you wanted a big career as a movie star or TV star
especially if you wanted to play straight roles
which were the only roles that really existed
at the time you had to live this weird double life.
Pretend you were dating women publicly
and then secretly live your, live
your secret gay life that you were not supposed to talk
about. You know, that you could go live
in some weird gay enclave somewhere when no one
was looking when the cameras weren't on.
And I can only imagine that's the best those guys could do.
That's what they were offered.
Like those were their choices
but what horrible choices to have to make.
Yeah.
Right. And now I don't have to make those choices.
Right. And Bros is really a moment to celebrate the fact
that we have come a really long way. That the entire
movie is made up of openly LGBTQ actors, the entire cast.
That's a first, this movie is a first
in many ways and that's one of them.
And that's when you look at the history
of it, you know, a 20 year old queer kid now
who may not know the history may say, oh, all right, well
I see gay people everywhere.
They're all over my phone. They're all over TV.
But if you know the history of Hollywood,
especially major studio filmmaking, that is huge.
That is a huge moment.
It's very hard.
I mean, and also I think you're making the point
and I would agree that it,
it's impossible to expect someone who's 20
or 22 today to completely understand
cause they just haven't lived it.
Yeah.
But so much has changed.
You know, I'm a good, a good deal older than you.
And I've just watched there be such a evolution
in how people talk about, you know,
not just the LGBTQ community, but race, class.
So many things have evolved.
Mm-hmm.
And it doesn't mean we, we, okay, we did it.
Let's all high five each other, we're done.
It has to keep going. Right.
We have to keep, but it is
it is a positive in a world of negativity.
Mm-hmm.
It is a positive perspective to have.
Yeah.
That these things have changed and young people
you know, today, maybe, they can be impatient
for it should be better than it is right away.
And I understand that. Right.
And maybe that's really important. That's the rocket fuel.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, okay, you guys think this is, you know
look how far we've come.
I don't care about that. Cause I'm 22
and I think this is the least of where we should be.
Yeah.
Which is probably the right perspective.
I do get inspired by that generation though
because I always thought I was very bold and outspoken
but they really push the boundaries.
Yeah.
Especially when it comes to sex
and being very open about it and queer sex and gay sex.
And, and I sometimes see what's posted
on Instagram from my younger gay friends and I'm like
wow. Okay.
Oh, so suddenly you're the old school marm.
No exactly.
No. I'm like,
I don't think that's appropriate at all.
I'm like Mrs. Garrett, all of a sudden.
(Exuberant Laughter)
And they're like Tootie and Natalie running wild
on roller skates throughout the house.
And I'm like girls, I don't if this is okay!
(Exuberant Laughter)
But it is okay.
You're the modern Mrs. Garrett. I love it.
I've always wondered. What is Billy?
You're the Mrs. Garrett of our time.
That nailed it. You nailed it.
RIP, Charlotte Rae.
We both went to Northwestern by the way.
Uh-huh.
And if only Mrs. Garrett were alive
to see Bros. Put that on the poster.
But, but no there's the younger kids
the younger queer kids are inspiring me.
It's like, okay, we can have a few sex scenes
in Bros and people will, will embrace that.
And it's actually really fun and exciting and it's okay.
We don't have to be scared of that anymore.
And I'm, I'm happy.
I need that push from that generation myself a little bit.