.billyeichner on TheLionKing, the time he had Thanksgiving with Barbra Streisand, and what it’s like to be hugged by Beyoncé
Photo: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney Billy Eichner is most famous for running through the streets of New York City with various celebrities in tow, shouting at strangers. The comedian has built his public persona on being brash and larger-than-life fearless — which is why it’s particularly fun to watch him transform into Timon, the melodramatic, gently neurotic meerkat who takes the traumatized Simba under his wing in Jon Favreau’s new “live action” version of The Lion King.
I mean, it was always guided by Jon. Nothing came out of thin air, necessarily. There was a theme to the scene, like: What would Timon and Pumbaa’s perspective be in this scene? And we’d use it as a launching point for a lot of riffing. And I was surprised that a lot of it ended up in the movie. Something that often happens when you’re improvising, there’s a kernel of something that Jon or one of us hears, and it’s not in its perfect form yet, but you turn that into a more polished joke.
Timon is not written as … we don’t know what Timon is, really. What I like is that Jon Favreau kept up the tradition of hiring a gay actor, or an actor with a gay comedic sensibility. Although for me, it’s really a theatrical sensibility that Nathan Lane brought to the original. I’m assuming Jon was looking for someone who had a similar, larger-than-life theatrical quality to bring to the role. I’m honored to walk in those footsteps.
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