Billy Eichner to portray Paul Lynde in biopic: “He was as out as you could be, at that time”

This is fantastic news!

Wow.

Deadline reports that Billy Eichner and producer Tom McNulty are developing Man in the Box, a biopic based on the life of groundbreaking TV icon Paul Lynde.

Eichner plans to star.

Lynde is best known for being the hilarious center square on Hollywood Squares for many, many years. He also played uncle Arthur on Bewitched, starred in a few short-lived sitcoms, and was in the Broadway and film versions of Bye Bye Birdie.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview posted today:
DEADLINE: Paul Lynde was a very funny actor, but what about him made this worth movie treatment for you?

EICHNER: There’s some overlap, between Paul and I, in that we both had our breakthrough in the industry, as performers, presenting a rather larger-than-life, flamboyant, gay persona on screen. Even though I was always very out, Paul was never technically out. But he was as out as you could be, at that time, in that he was clearly leaning into a flamboyant persona. Unlike Rock Hudson, and Tab Hunter, and Cary Grant, and all these other actors, he wasn’t pretending to be straight. You didn’t see him getting set up on dates with women, or having phony relationships with women, to try to present to the world as a straight man. I think that was very admirable, for the time, and also, if you look at those jokes on Hollywood Squares, he comes as close to admitting he’s gay as you possibly can. He’s making thinly veiled, at best, references to gay sex, to finding men attractive, to swinging both ways. It’s not even subtle, and rather bold for the time. That wasn’t some underground, indie film being shot in New York; it was as mainstream as you can get. Hollywood Squares was a huge hit, always in the top 10 or 20 shows, for over a decade. It made him a very famous, wealthy person.