At this point, even Billy Corgan isn’t sure what is real life and what is fantasy. Since the Smashing Pumpkins singer appeared on Howie Mandel’s Does Stuff podcast in November and revealed that his stepmother once told him that comedian Bill Burr might be one of his half-brothers after Mandel accidentally put a photo of the stand-up instead of the rocker, things have gotten progressively weirder.
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After the two men were then surprised by Mandel when he had them unexpectedly meet for the first time in person on his pod earlier this year, Corgan, 57, told People magazine that the meet-weird was not a bit, but actually the real thing.
“It was one of those rare moments where I think all three of us really didn’t know where it was going. And you see that, and that’s what makes it sort of interesting,” Corgan said of the episode Mandel dubbed “Family Reunion with Bill Burr & Billy Corgan.”
“There’s enough energy there that that’s why it’s not a bit, because it’s really about confronting something in a way that none of us really knew what that confrontation would lead to, and you see it play out,” he continued. “You see jokes, but you also see kind of like, oh, there’s something there.”
It was so real, in fact, that Corgan said some close friends still ask him about the interaction, and ask for receipts. “A really good friend of mine said to me, looking around, ‘Okay, now tell me the truth.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re related,’” Corgan said. “And then my friend said, ‘Well, I think you are.’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess it’s possible because he really does look like my father in a way that’s almost shocking to me.’ So then my friend goes, ‘Well then get a DNA test.’”
While Corgan has heard stories about his late musician father — William Corgan, who died in 2021 — allegedly having a number of children out of wedlock, the rocker said one of the intriguing things about the potential mid-life reveal of a half-brother in 56-year-old fellow chrome dome Burr is that there is no definitive answer for now.
“It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s sort of strange,” Corgan said. “It really started from honest things, which are, my father may have fathered 12 other children, and the facts of Bill’s life actually do match the story that I was told. There’s no invention there.”
Burr was audibly and visibly upset by the unannounced family reunion, lambasting his longtime friend Mandel, and almost walking out of the interview in protest. “He’s bringing it here, not because he’s trying to heal the bulls–t that we went through growing up. He’s getting here just for the f–king ratings,” Burr said of Mandel during the awkward appearance.
Mandel did eventually leave the room and the two men traded stories about the man they both described as their dad, though Burr initially was not able to let go of his anger about the surprise. Asking what Mandel thought was going to happen, Burr wondered, “Are we going to play catch? We’re both in our 50s!”
Mandel later apologized for the unexpected bit, saying on a subsequent pod, “I feel horrible and I’m sorry, Bill. I’m sorry, Billy. I only tried to do something good,” noting that at that point in early February he had not heard a “peep” from his longtime friend Burr.