Billy Eichner shows 'Difficult' side on Hulu

NEW YORK — Give Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner an audience, and stand back.

It's a Thursday evening, and the comedians are sitting inside Chelsea's SVA Theater before the New York premiere of their Hulu sitcom Difficult People. In a few minutes, they'll be walking the red carpet with the show's executive producer, Amy Poehler, but for now, a small army of stylists and PR reps are stifling laughter as the duo lays into everything from Game of Thrones' rape scenes to Bill Cosby's accusers to Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who appears on the show as Klausner's "lesbian love interest," they joke.

"We didn't want Malala to be on the show, but her publicist was aggressive," Klausner says dryly. "It turned out, she had good comic timing."

"She does, and she's doing an arc on Fresh Off the Boat," Eichner quips, leaning in to his mic: "Get ready for that, Randall Park fans."

Eichner and Klausner's easy rapport is the cornerstone of Difficult (two episodes premiering Wednesday, and one weekly after that through Sept. 16), for which they write and star as less successful but more irreverent versions of themselves. Imagined as a sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Will and Grace, the show tracks their misadventures with families and boyfriends, and hinges on their attempts to break into comedy — mostly at the expense of other people.

In one episode, Billy gets booted from Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live because of a mean tweet about what he'd rather watch less: Chelsea Handler's nipples or her upcoming Netflix series. Afterward, Julie reassures him, "Talking (crap) about celebrities is what we do, OK? It's the only thing that comes more naturally to us than breathing air." But there's more to their characters than off-color swings at Twitter stardom.

"The fact that (fictionalized) Billy and Julie are trying to be successful in show business — I don't want to say it's arbitrary, but it's not the meat of the show," Klausner, 37, says. "The truth is that we're way too old to be struggling in New York and we're convinced the world's against us. But at the same time, we keep getting in our own way, and those themes are universal."

Klausner's ex-boyfriend was the first to show her Eichner's in-your-face man-on-the-street videos, which paved the way for his pop-culture game show Billy on the Street (returning for a fourth season on TruTV in October). A self-described "fat, gay Jewish kid" from Queens who studied theater at Northwestern University, Eichner, 36, got his start in stand-up and acting off-Broadway, before he started uploading videos to YouTube in 2006. He's since appeared as a correspondent on Conan and in a segment with Seth Meyers on last year's Emmy Awards, in which he accosted passersby about The Big Bang Theory and Maggie Smith.

When Eichner landed the TV version of Billy in 2011, he invited Klausner, a comedy podcaster and author, to be a writer on the show. In the meantime, she started working on a script inspired by their friendship, hoping to showcase a different side of Eichner than his brazen persona from Billy or equally manic recurring character on NBC's Parks and Recreation. "I was invested in Billy's future, and thought it would be a cool way to transition him from doing man-on-the-street stuff to playing a fictional version of himself," Klausner says.

"Julie knew me well enough to trust that I could do that," Eichner adds. "It's a miracle when you can find someone and the voices match so closely." In touch most days through texts and Twitter, they volley obscure Broadway and comedy references off each other, and "say terrible things about our friends and people who think we like them."

Poehler was introduced to Klausner years ago through Upright Citizens Brigade and was the first recipient of the Difficult script. Also a producer of Comedy Central's Broad City, she was very hands-on in the development process, although the three butted heads occasionally over some of the show's racier jokes, says Eichner. "We're a little more mean-spirited and she's America's sweetheart," he says. "Sometimes I could see Amy being like, 'Mmm, I don't know if we can say that,' and Julie and I would be like, 'No, we're going to because this is who we are.' "

USA ordered a pilot of the series last summer, but scrapped the show when it abandoned scripted comedies. But with a finished episode in hand, Klausner and Eichner brought Difficult to Hulu, which ordered it last November. It's a move that ultimately made sense to the comedy team, whose offbeat humor is more in line with a sitcom such as The Mindy Project, which Fox axed this summer but will continue on Hulu later this year.

Difficult " is way more of a show to be streaming on Hulu than a show to be following Dig on USA," Eichner says. "I'm sure it's a great show — who doesn't love to dig? — but it's just not necessarily the best fit for our sensibility."

"Now," Klausner looks over, "is that the first show targeted to terriers that they've had on USA?"

"Wasn't Terriers a show?" Eichner nods. "It was."