Billy Eichner to play oh-so-gay comic Paul Lynde in new biopic

Paul Lynde and Elizabeth Montgomery in “Bewitched”
Photo by: Wikimedia Commons

Comedian Billy Eichner has announced his latest undertaking, stepping into the role of gay comic actor Paul Lynde in a new biopic titled Man in a Box.

Paul Lynde began his career on Broadway, scoring a breakout role as Mr. MacAfee in the original production of Bye Bye Birdie. Lynde won rave reviews for his portrait of a neurotic father, and moved on to a career in television thereafter. He had another hit with a recurring role as the flamboyant Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, and later, became a TV icon playing as the center square on the game show Hollywood Squares. 

As a popular actor in the 1960s and 1970s, Lynde found himself in an odd position, never able to openly live as a gay man, but often playing “coded” gay characters or using wink-at-the-camera entendre to signal his homosexuality to viewers. Off-screen, he had a reputation for heavy drinking and drug use, as well as cruel behavior. He died in 1982.

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Now Eichner–another comic with a reputation for acid wit–says he has found his dream role. “There’s some overlap,” Eichner tells Deadline, “between Paul and I, in that we both had our breakthrough in the industry, as performers, presenting a rather larger-than-life, flamboyant, gay persona on screen. Even though I was always very out, Paul was never technically out. But he was as out as you could be, at that time, in that he was clearly leaning into a flamboyant persona.”

Billy Eichner
Photo by: Wikimedia Commons

Eichner also sees Man in the Box as an opportunity to….

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