Billy Eichner Looks Back on 20 Years of Billy on the Street's 'Gay Sensibility'

Billy Eichner is the first to admit that he never tried to pioneer diversity.

But 20 years ago, when he recorded his first video of an ambush interview, which would become a very popular pop culture quiz Billy on the street, he represented the “gay comic sensibility” to a wider audience.

Speaking to PEOPLE for LGBTQ+ Pride Month 2022, the writer and rom-com star. brothers he recalls that the moment happened in September 2004.

“I made Billy on the street video, which was for a segment on my live show that I’ve done for years in New York called Creation Nation,” Eichner, 45, tells PEOPLE. “I did this show with my friend Robin Taylor, also an actor. He was my sidekick and over time I developed that persona, that persona who became more irrationally angry at pop culture and entertainment as the night went on.”

Then an idea came to him. “Okay, so what if we take this person and put them out on the street and force people to deal with it?”

It did not come naturally to him, he says. “Like most actors, I’m shy. I’m not a bum, but to go out on the street and deal with real New Yorkers, this wasn’t in my wheelhouse in terms of my comfort level.”

Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane in the movie ‘Brothers’. Universal Pictures’ ‘Bros’ star Billy Eichner brings back ‘Billy on the Street’ after nearly 3 years — with Paul Rudd!

– I had no idea what would come of this. What will come is pop culture history — and some LGBTQ+ visibility.

“It really introduced a new voice to some people,” he explains of the piece that became a viral sensation before the viral release and his own show on Funny or die. (“The only thing that made that happen was the internet coming along,” he says) “It created a bridge. Because queer people recognized that it was a gay voice. But straight people just watched me vehemently argue about about who was the better actress, Glenn Close or Meryl Streep, which, interestingly, was the kind of comedy that was associated with straight people,” explains Eichner.

August 2, 2012: Rashida Jones joins Billy Eichner on set in midtown Manhattan for Billy on the Street.

Photos by Angela Cranford/MSG

Growing up in New York, Eichner remembers the lack of openly LGBTQ+ comedians.

“Things slowly started to change in the ’90s, right around the time I started thinking about a career as an actor,” he says, “so I looked for signs of hope.”

Eichner found that hope in actors like Nathan Lane, Rupert Everett and Sean Hayes. But his professional path still had its ups and downs. “I had a manager who was inviting major talent agents to my live show and asked me to be ‘less gay’ that month,” he says. “This was in 2006.”

Today, Eichner is amazed at the progress. He is set to appear in an upcoming Netflix documentary Extraordinary: The Comedy Revolutionthe first feature-length documentary to explore the history of queer stand-up comedy, establishing the importance of LGBTQ+ stand-up as a driver of social change over the past five decades.

We’re seeing gender-fluid, non-binary, trans comedians who are able to tap into the power of this moment and step into “‘mainstream’ spaces,” he says, citing performers like Alok Vaid-Menon and Dylan Mulvaney.

“We’re seeing it to a degree that’s never existed before in the history of comedy, or the history of Hollywood, or the history of planet Earth.”

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Source: HIS Education