Billie Eilish is giving an insight into her experience with Tourette’s syndrome.
Speaking to Amy Poehler on her “Good Hang” podcast on Tuesday, May 5, the singer, 24, opened up about the often “frustrating” condition.
“I do have Tourette’s and I have vocal tics but, luckily for me and for everyone else, they’re mostly just noises and I can keep them pretty quiet,” Eilish explained. “I go through phases of words becoming tics, but there’s a thing called suppressing, if you ever heard of it.”
She added, “When I’m in an interview, I’m doing everything in my power to suppress all of my tics constantly. And as soon as I leave the room, I have to let them all out.”
The “Bad Guy” singer described the condition as your mouth being forced to say all your “intrusive thoughts” out loud.
Eilish went on to note that the lack of understanding surrounding tics and Tourette’s in general can be difficult to deal with.
“I think what’s troubling about the way that people do not understand what Tourette’s is, if I start having a tic attack, like a lot of tics in a row, people are like, ‘Are you OK?’” she said. “This is very much normal. It’s like, if you didn’t see me tic today, you’re not looking at my knees, which are tic-ing constantly under this table, and my elbows that are like … I’m clenching my arms the entire time.”
Billie Eilish. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
She continued: “Some people don’t even have the privilege of getting to suppress them at all in any way. The ‘not understanding’ of that is really frustrating, as a person with Tourette’s.”
Eilish was diagnosed with the disorder as a child and told David Letterman during a 2022 appearance on his late-night talk show that she rarely discusses it, partly due to other people’s reactions to her tics.
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“It’s really weird, I haven’t talked about it at all,” she said at the time. “The most common way that people react is they laugh because they think I’m trying to be funny. They think I’m [ticcing] as a funny move. And so they go, ‘Ha,’ and I’m always left incredibly offended by that. Or they go ‘What?’ and then I go, ‘I have Tourette’s.’”
The “When the Party’s Over” singer also briefly touched on her experience with Tourette’s while appearing on Ellen in April 2019.
“It’s something I’ve lived with my whole life,” she told host Ellen DeGeneres. “I just never said anything about it because I didn’t want that to define who I was. I didn’t want to be ‘the artist with Tourette’s.’”
