Billie Eilish Talks About Having Tourette's Syndreme & How Her Tics Are 'Exhausting'

Billie Eilish is opening up about what it’s like to live with Tourette’s syndrome.

The 20-year-old Grammy and Oscar-winning singer talked about her Tourette’s diagnosis during an interview for David Letterman‘s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

“If you film me for long enough, you’re going to see a lot of tics,” she said.

Click inside to read what else she said…

David asked Billie if she’d be okay discussing her experience with the syndrome and he said, “It’s really weird, I haven’t talked about it at all. The most common way that people react is they laugh because they think I’m trying to be funny. They think I’m going [imitates tic] as a funny move. And so they go, ‘Ha,’ and I’m always left incredibly offended by that. Or they go [looks around] ‘What?’ and then I go, ‘I have Tourette’s.’”

“So many people have it and you’d never know. A couple artists have come forward and said, ‘I’ve always had Tourette’s.’ And I’m not going to out them because they don’t want to talk about it. But that was really interesting to me because I was like, ‘You do? What?’” Billie continued. “I’m very happy to talk about it. I actually really like answering questions about it because it’s really interesting, and I am incredibly confused by it. I don’t get it.”

Billie also opened up the physical tics.

“I never don’t tic at all, because the main tics that I do constantly, all day long, are like, I wiggle my ear back and forth and raise my eyebrow and click my jaw … and flex my arm here and flex this arm, flex these muscles. These are things you would never notice if you’re just having a conversation with me, but for me, they’re very exhausting,” she said.

Billie now feels that her tics are “part” of her. She added, “I have made friends with it, so now I’m pretty confident in it.”

Check out the other guests on Letterman‘s new season.