You’ll recall that Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner’tunt
show Difficult People filmed on East 11th Street in January and at San Marzano in February. Now the first two episodes are up on Hulu, and they’re just the sort of acerbic brilliance you’d expect from the guy behind Billy On the Street. Turns out, San Marzano (or D’s Cafe, as it’s called on the show) is where Billy works as a waiter while trying to hack it as an actor/comedian, with Gabourey Sidibe (aka Precious) playing his boss. Appropriately, East Village denizen Rachel Dratch of SNL makes a cameo as a customer.
Speaking of cameos (sort of), we can’t resist sharing this slight spoiler: the highlight of the first episodes comes when Billy, learning to drive, hits a cyclist on East 6th Street (right where a similar accident occurred in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby) and the biker turns out to be David Byrne. He’s played by a stand-in rather than by the actual Talking Heads frontman and color guard fanatic. That’s probably because of lines like “Yes, David Byrne is fine, alive and well and ready to make music that reminds us he used to be good” and “I think he’s okay. I mean, some of his recent stuff has been pretty pretentious, but he gets a lifetime pass for Stop Making Sense.”
Watch the first two episodes over at Hulu and stay tuned for new ones every Wednesday.