Billie Eilish has not been secretive about living with Tourette Syndrome, but she’s also not talked much about it openly. After an involuntary movement was captured in an interview, Eilish opened up.
The “No Time to Die” singer was a guest on the latest season of David Letterman’s “No Time Left to Die” and it was during their long chat that he noticed a tic. The late night legend asked if it would be okay to talk about it.
“If you film me for long enough, you’re going to see a lot of tics,” Eilish said, telling him that she’s actually happy to talk about it, even though she doesn’t really, usually.
“I actually really like answering questions about it because it’s really interesting, and I am incredibly confused by it,” she admitted. “I don’t get it.”
Eilish had previously acknowledged that she has tourette’s during an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, saying that she first began to develop signs when she was 11 years old. She said that most of her tics have died down, but some still linger.
And the singer isn’t the only one who seems confused by what’s happening. In fact, she said when a tic does manifest, the most common reaction she gets from people is that they start laughing.
“The most common way that people react is they laugh because they think I’m trying to be funny,” she explained. She said they think she’s moving this way in an attempt to be funny.
“And so they go, ‘Ha,’ and I’m always left incredibly offended by that,” she continued. “Or they go ‘What?’ and then I go, ‘I have Tourette’s.’”
Eilish said that so many more people have it than many realize, including “a couple artists” she knows who’ve admitted as much to her. “I’m not going to out them because they don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “But that was really interesting to me because I was like, ‘You do? What?'”
Like Eilish, these artists really don’t talk about it publicly, so should any tics manifest, they are more than likely also misunderstood … and possibly reacted to poorly.
The singer explained that she never experiences her tics while performing, or doing other physical activities, or even when she’s just “thinking and focusing.” It’s when she’s off stage and in her downtime that it will happen.
“These are things you would never notice if you’re having a conversation with me, but for me, they’re very exhausting,” she said.
The singer demonstrated some of her main tics for Letterman, telling him that she doesn’t even really notice them anymore even as she’s the one doing them. “I wiggle my ear back and forth and raise my eyebrow and click my jaw and flex this arm here and this arm there,” she explained, demonstrating.
She said that while she can’t go so far as to say she likes that this is a part of her, she has come to accept it, describing it as having “made friends with it.”
The new season of “My Guest Needs No Introduction” is streaming now on Netflix.
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