Billie Eilish opens up about her Tourette syndrome
Is there anyone who doesn't love Billie Eilish? Whether you like her music or not (personally, I think her songs are delightful), she as a person is so fun to watch. She is of course still very young (she is now twenty, but she broke through at thirteen), but she comes across as so wise and is wonderfully normal. And especially that last part is refreshing to see, alongside all the polished American artists. Billie once participated in Carpool Karaoke and even managed to make it fun (yes, sorry, James Corden is not really my cup of tea), and now there was an interview released last week with David Letterman and she can do no wrong in my eyes.
This interview can be seen on Netflix, in David Letterman's series ‘My next guest needs no introduction’. The title says it all a bit, but they are indeed not the least guests: alongside Billie Eilish, Will Smith, Cardi B, and Ryan Reynolds also take a seat on the couch.
For the first time, Billie was open about her Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, something she had never told the general public before. On the couch with David Letterman, she had a tic, triggered by a change in the lighting in the studio (‘If you film me long enough, you're going to see quite a few tics from me,’ she told him). She candidly shared how she was diagnosed at the age of eleven and how painful it is when people react strangely.
‘The most common way people react is that they laugh, because they think I'm trying to be funny... And every time I find that so offensive.’ However, she finds the condition ‘very exhausting’.
The singer had never spoken about this before, but she has since discovered that she is far from the only celebrity dealing with Tourette: ‘What's funny is that so many people have it whom you would never know. A few artists have come to me to tell me that they also have Tourette. I'm not going to betray them because they don't want to talk about it openly, but it was so interesting for me to hear. I was like: you too?! What?!’
But she fortunately feels absolutely no shame about her condition. And rightly so. In fact, she finds it nice that she is finally talking about it: ‘I know nothing about Tourette. So I actually find it very nice to answer questions about it because it's very, very interesting. And I'm also really confused by it, I don't understand the illness at all.’
Because she was diagnosed with it years ago, it has now become a part of her: ‘It's not that I enjoy having it, but it has become a part of me. I'm friends with it and because of that, I'm quite confident about it nowadays.’
Want to know more about Tourette syndrome? Click here.
