Billie Eilish Reveals Her Loves/Hates During Colbert Questionert: Tangerines, ‘Man Stank,’ PB&J, Whales and ‘Nightcall’

By now you probably think you know just about everything there is to know about Billie Eilish. The singer has been in our lives for nearly a decade and between her confessional songs and revealing interviews, the 22-year-old “Birds of a Feather” singer has shared a lot.

But things got super-deep on Thursday night (August 15) when she sat down on The Late Show for what is known as the most probing series of questions in the celebrity universe: The Colbert Questionert. The first one was a slam-dunk, or should have been, with Eilish immediately noting that the best sandwich is the one her brother, producer Finneas, makes for her. “It’s like a pesto… it’s a pesto situation, with like an eggplant thing,” Eilish revealed.

“A pesto situation with an eggplant thing?” Colbert said, before things got super sandwich nerdy. Meandering, Eilish announced, “I like French bread.”

Confused, and smelling comedy gold, Colbert asked, “Is it a secret? I just want to know why I can’t know any of your sandwich recipes. Are you opening up your own chain?” Then Eilish — wearing a striped blazer over a checkered shirt to go with a backwards baseball cap and oval glasses — laughed and admitted that she never really peels back the bread to see what’s inside her sandwiches. “You don’t look a gift sandwich in the mouth?” Colbert deadpanned.

Eilish then admitted that the very best sandwich is the good old PB&J.

The singer revealed her very first concert was The Neighbourhood, fronted by former boyfriend Jesse Rutherford, and that the scariest animal is, duh, “a f–kin’ whale, dude! Those motherf–kers are so big!” While beautiful and stunning, Eilish said she simple doesn’t want to “mess around” with anything that massive.

Strangely, the hardest question for Eilish was the one that’s usually a slam-dunk: apples or oranges. As it turns out, Billie loves a tangerines, but when asked to choose between a Cutie and a Fuji apple, Eilish went Honeycrisp, final answer. She then switched and went tangerine after all. Asked if she’s ever gotten a celebrity autograph, Eilish said she went to a Skylar Grey signing when she was nine-years-old and that she has a signed Tori Kelly CD somewhere in her house.

Though her songs often probe the deepest depths of her emotions and feelings, when it comes to what happens to us when we die, Eilish admitted to having no clue. “We go back to where we were… nothing,” she said. “I love the afterlife idea and if I see it, that’s great.” The pair agreed that some finality is better than an open-ended story with no cut-off point. “I don’t need it to keep going… seems greedy,” Eilish said.

Asked to name her favorite action movie, Eilish questioned what that even means. “There’s fighting, explosions…” Colbert offered, which elicited a quick response. “I love The Dark Knight. I have seen that movie like 17 times,” Eilish said. For the record, Billie is 100% Team Window Seat (vs. Aisle), her favorite smell is honeysuckle, her least favorite smell is “a bad person smell… man stank,” her earliest memory is swinging on a swing in her back yard and sorry, childless cat ladies, she’s a dog lady.

Then Colbert got the meat of the matter and quizzed Eilish on the one song she’d listen to if she had to pick a track for the rest of her life. “I would hear ‘Nightcall’ by Kavinsky,” she said of the track that had a streaming surge after being featured in the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where she and Finneas also performed. For the record, Eilish said that’s been her top-played song for the past three years.

And finally, when it came to describing the rest of her life in five words, Eilish said what she hopes it will be like, “laughter… smiling… snuggling… eating… singing.”

Watch Eilish take the Colbert Questionert below.