Billy Eichner Set to Play Paul Lynde – 'Not Just Some Gay Victim'

Out actor Billy Eichner is set to play closeted actor Paul Lynde in a biopic, Deadline reports in an exclusive interview with the actor.

The project, entitled "Man in the Box," is being developed by Eichner and producer Tom McNulty. They have optioned a script by Edwin Cannistraci and are actively "meeting with creatives to round out the rest of the production team," writes Deadline.

Lynde is best-known for being the center square on "Hollywood Squares" whose sassy quips made him an audience favorite. He appeared on the show more than 700 times. Prior to that he was a Broadway character actor who made his leap to Hollywood reprising his role in "Bye Bye Birdie" for the film. He went on to play Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched," and his own series, "The Paul Lynde Show," a short-lived flop that only ran one season in 1972.

On Hollywood Squares, many of the jokes were not-so-subtle references to his being gay, but Lynde never came out of the closet. His biographer and friend Cathy Rudolph told Fox News in 2018 that "being gay and having to hide it frustrated him."

He was also frustrated that he wasn't taken seriously as an actor, Rudolph, who wrote "Paul Lynde: A Biography – His Life, His Love(s) and His Laughter," called Lynde "a frustrated actor." In a profile about the actor on the website CloserWeekly, she says: "He really wanted to be a movie star; that was his dream. That's why he bought a house that Errol Flynn once owned – he wanted a home like a movie star should have, but he wasn't one. That was his heartbreak."

That Lynde "was not on the same lists for roles as straight actors" is "one of the reasons Eichner wants to see the film made is because of the chance to illustrate how little things have changed," writes Deadline.

Eichner has shown his versatility hosting "Billy on the Street" to voicing Timon in "The Lion King," to roles on "American Horror Story" and the upcoming "American Crime Story," where he plays Matt Drudge.

In a Q&A, Eichner says that Lynde was a "complicated" person and "not just some gay victim," but also feels he was pigeonholed in straight Hollywood. "Why didn't the culture, society, the industry, bolster him the way that it bolstered Woody Allen, or Mel Brooks?" he asks.

He also feels that those limitations on LGBTQ actors still exist. "Perhaps we're not as marginalized, politically, or in the world at large and obviously things have gotten better. But within our industry, although you're seeing more gay people on TV, and more gay characters, we're often used in such limited ways. I think that dovetails with how Paul felt limited."

And those limitations haunt Eichner, who offered a cynical assessment of coming out of the closet in today's Hollywood. "What's happened is that, when someone comes out of the closet, we celebrate them. We applaud them. We put them on the cover of magazines. We say, thank you for living your truth, and thank you for being brave, and you're such a role model for our gay kids. And then instantly, that actor gets taken off so many casting lists in the business. This is exactly what happened to Paul, and if it's still happening today, which I can tell you from my own career, having lived it on the day to day, for almost 20 years now, it happened to Paul in even more extreme ways, and he felt very limited by that."