Billie Eilish Reveals the Subtle Technique She Uses to Keep Tourette’s Tics in Check

Billie Eilish got real about living with Tourette's this week, and it was one of the clearest, most grounded explanations I’ve heard from a major artist about what the day-to-day actually feels like.

What she said on Amy Poehler's podcast

On Tuesday, May 5, the 24-year-old singer sat down with Amy Poehler on her podcast 'Good Hang' and walked through how Tourette's shows up for her. She said she has vocal tics — mostly small sounds she can keep pretty quiet — and that sometimes certain words turn into tics for a while. There’s also a tactic called suppressing: basically, holding everything in until you can’t anymore.

'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.'

How she broke it down

• She does have Tourette's and vocal tics, but most of what people would hear are small noises she tries to keep under the radar. Sometimes words become tics for stretches of time.
• Suppressing is a thing for her in public settings — especially interviews — but it takes work. The release comes right after.
• She compared the condition to your mouth blurting out intrusive thoughts you don’t actually want to say, which is a good shorthand for how out-of-your-control it can feel.
• When a bunch of tics stack up — what she called a tic attack — people tend to ask 'Are you OK?' But for her, that flurry can be totally normal.
• If you don’t notice her ticcing, it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. She said her knees might be going under the table, her elbows too, and she’ll be clenching her arms the entire time.
• Not everyone with Tourette's can suppress at all, which is why the general confusion about the condition is so frustrating to her.

The part people miss

Eilish was diagnosed as a kid and has learned how to navigate it, but the misunderstanding around tics is still the exhausting part. She said the lack of awareness is what wears her down more than the tics themselves.

She’s talked about this before — carefully

Back in 2022, during a sit-down with David Letterman on his late-night show, she said she doesn’t bring Tourette's up often because of how people react. The most common reaction she gets? People laugh like it’s a bit — they assume the tic is a joke — which she finds flat-out offensive. Other times, someone will go 'What?' and she ends up spelling it out: she has Tourette's.

She also mentioned it on Ellen in April 2019, calling it something she’s lived with her whole life and explaining why she kept quiet at first: she didn’t want to be introduced forever as 'the artist with Tourette's.' For an artist as visible as the 'Bad Guy' and 'When the Party’s Over' singer, that context matters — especially when most of the work she’s doing to manage it is happening off-camera, under a table, or right after the mic turns off.