Billy Eichner came very close to quitting show business after a decade of trying to make it big in Hollywood, but Joan Rivers talked him out of it.
“I came very close [to quitting] it was 2009,” the comedian, 47, told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview while promoting his newly released audio book, “Billy on Billy.”
Four years before that, there was a big uproar about Eichner with a flattering article in the New York Times, and “everyone was just saying my life was going to change,” he explained, adding that diplomats “were telling me I’d be on TV with my show in six months.”
“And to be honest, I think they were completely wrong. It’s just that it took six years and not six months.”
The former “Billy on the Street” alum admitted that she started to panic, worrying about “money and just living and paying my bills.”
“You can make love into a struggling artist in your 20s,” Eichner says, “but I was in my 30s. [then] so that was not fun for me. I had a very difficult time justifying myself [it]at that time.”
So, he reached out to Joan Rivers, whom he had known for several years and worked with on a failed pilot.
“He invited me over for dinner and drinks,” Eichner recalls, “and it was at that dinner that he encouraged me to take a break.” He also told him that he had “unique powers.”
“I think he saw something in me and thought I could do it,” he said. “And that’s the reason I decided to give it a few more years. And that was 2009. In 2010, my first video went viral, and in 2011, ‘Billy on the Street’ became a growing television show.”
The “AHS” alum isn’t sure what River saw in him.
“Maybe he saw that our backgrounds are similar,” he said. “We were weird, we were angry, we were from New York City. He obviously liked gay men, and he responded to that part of me.
Amazingly, Rivers was the first comedian Eichner ever saw when his father performed for him at the Shore Haven Beach Club when he was eight, “and 20, 25 years later, he became my real champion.”
The “Bros” star said he was happy to include his memories of Rivers, who died in 2014 at the age of 81, and to honor him.
This incredibly moving book also pays tribute to Eichner’s parents, Debbie and Jay Eichner, who both died before their son’s success and were incredibly supportive of his every endeavor.
Eichner said he was touched by the way people reacted to his parents.
“It’s been kind of surreal, in a good way, watching all these people who didn’t know my parents, now they feel like them,” he said. “And there are many comments that say, ‘If all children were loved the way Jay and Debbie Eichner were loved, the world would be a different place.’
