Billie Eilish on Her Concert Tour Film with James Cameron, Relationship with Finneas, and What’s Next

Eilish didn’t initially plan to shoot a live performance movie for this tour—a lot much less one which follows her so carefully behind the scenes as she hangs out with buddies, does bodily remedy, or cries within the greenroom. Her earlier live performance movie, Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, was directed by Robert Rodriguez and Patrick Osborne and featured animated components, à la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which added whimsy and made up for the truth that it was filmed in a vacant Hollywood Bowl on the peak of the pandemic. Before that, director R. J. Cutler had carefully documented her adolescence and the making of her sensational 2019 debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, for the movie Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry.

“At first I was like, ‘I don’t want to do a documentary,’” she explains. “I shot a documentary when I was 15 to 18, just being filmed for three years straight.…I’m so private about my actual life now.”

But then Cameron got here calling. Eilish obtained his pitch for the movie from her mother, actor and activist Maggie Baird, who based the L.A. nonprofit group Support + Feed, which distributes plant-based meals to unhoused communities and others struggling with meals insecurity whereas decreasing the carbon footprint. “Usually, things go through the team and the managers,” Eilish says. “But it was literally my mom who told me, ‘Hey, James Cameron has been really obsessed with your show from afar.’”

Coat, Prada. Scarf, Miu Miu.

Eilish relies in L.A., a hop, skip, and a leap from Hollywood—and from Highland Park, the northeastern neighborhood the place she grew up. The 24-year-old was raised in a wildly artistic household. Her dad and mom, a carpenter and a instructor, additionally labored as part-time actors, and homeschooled Eilish and her older brother, the Grammy-winning producer and singer-songwriter Finneas O’Connell, shuttling the children between varied music, performing, and dance lessons. Eilish tells me, although, that she’s simply realized how filmmaking really works. She’s spent the previous few weeks with Cameron in his Manhattan Beach manufacturing studio, Lightstorm Earth, the place they’ve been meticulously splicing live performance footage with the objective of delivering an action-packed viewing expertise. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we just film stuff backstage to have it?’ James was holding this enormous 3D camera this close to me,” she says, pinching her fingers in entrance of her nostril. “He was the one interviewing me. He’s the one asking me questions. And then I thought, This really does add a lot!”

On the telephone, Cameron says he knew of Eilish’s star energy onstage. But when he sat in on her first efficiency in Manchester, he realized her potential as a filmmaker, too. “I came to admire and respect her drive as an artist,” Cameron tells me. “How she manifests her artistic goals, not just to create beautiful music, but also to be a great performer. She was really the architect and creative guiding force on her show. She had conceived it so she would be in the center of the audience and play to all four quadrants. It’s quite remarkable: She runs like a maniac from one end of the stage to the other, from side to side. She’s all over the place, and the way in which she engages with her audience at the show is phenomenal.” Watching her, he says, “It occurred to me that she and I should codirect this film.”

Finneas says he was tickled by Cameron’s presence on the exhibits. “I got to watch him watch the show, which was really impressive,” Finneas remembers of the present in Manchester. “He was watching, like, 16 monitors at the same time, wearing 3D goggles. And because of the way 3D works, he had to center his head in front of each monitor that he was looking at, so he was dancing and bobbing, moving around. He’s an incredibly fast, passionate, and hardworking dude.”

A superhuman work ethic is one thing each Cameron and Eilish share. Still, Eilish has stated her previous excursions had been arduous, imposing a bodily toll on her physique. She incurred a hip development plate harm whereas working towards for a hip-hop dance competitors as a teen, and later realized that she suffers from hypermobility, a connective tissue dysfunction that comes with bouts of power ache. Her final tour, particularly, got here with just a few accidents. She sprained her ankle in Manchester, on the night time that Cameron first joined the crew to start out capturing the live performance movie. Earlier within the tour, throughout an October 2024 cease at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, she tumbled down the steps whereas exiting the stage and obtained a chunky bruise on her thigh. At a present in Miami, she fell when a person yanked her by the shirt; at one other present, this time in Glendale, Arizona, a fan pelted her with a necklace whereas she was singing. “See these scrapes on my hands? That is from the fans,” Eilish says within the movie.

Pullover, Chanel. Shirt, Egonlab. Hat, ’47 Brand. Brooch, Seaman Schepps. Brooch, Verdura. Clip, Van Cleef & Arpels. Earring (on hat), Massimo Izzo.

But she tells me the toughest factor about her newest tour was the truth that she’d carried out nearly all of it with out Finneas onstage with her. Together, the 2 are a multidisciplinary pop powerhouse that has cleaned up for years on the Grammys and the Academy Awards, changing into the youngest two-time Oscar winners for the songs they wrote for 2021’s James Bond movie No Time to Die and 2023’s Barbie.

“It was a few years in the making,” says Eilish of her choice to tour with out her brother, who has launched an EP and three albums on his personal, together with For Cryin’ Out Loud! in 2024. “We got so busy that we would only see each other right before going onstage,” Eilish says. “Finneas and Andrew [Eilish’s touring drummer], who were the only band members I had back in the day, performed on some sort of platform that was hard to leave. Finneas was stuck in a tower—like Rapunzel! He never said it, but I was feeling like, ‘You have more to be doing than being my band member in the back.’”

Although followers have speculated concerning the nature of his absence, each Eilish and Finneas inform me that her touring solo was a mutual choice. In the movie, Eilish may be seen tearing up at a letter from her brother wishing her luck on their first tour aside. Finneas dropped by just a few of Eilish’s exhibits for ethical help—and ultimately joined her onstage to sing. “It’s basically true that I don’t like touring, but I love the show part of it,” Finneas says. “And I love being around Billie. This past year, when she would be on tour for months, I missed her a lot.”

“I heard somebody say, ‘Did you guys hear Finneas and Billie had a falling-out?’” Eilish says. “Finneas and I have never and will never have a falling-out, ever in our lives. We’ll get in the biggest fucking fight you’ve ever heard of in your life…and five minutes later, we’re back, laughing and making music. It’s sibling shit. There’s nothing else in the world like sibling relationships.”

Hooded scarf, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Pants, Adidas Originals. Hat, ’47 Brand. Earring (on hat), Massimo Izzo. Clip, Van Cleef & Arpels. Brooch, Verdura, Broach, Seaman Schepps. Shoes, Miu Miu.

Hooded scarf, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Hat, ’47 Brand. Brooch, Verdura. Brooch, Seaman Schepps. Clip, Van Cleef & Arpels. Earring (on hat), Massimo Izzo.

She later muses, “If I never saw Finneas at all, I might literally never make a song again….” She trails off, seemingly contemplating the flip aspect of that closeness. “But how do we move on and have separate lives?”

Eilish says she needed to muster the energy to go it alone for the primary time. She introduced buddies alongside, outdated and new, as opening acts for her exhibits, together with her companion Nat Wolff and his brother Alex, The Marías, Towa Bird, Ashnikko, Lucy Dacus, and Young Miko. She additionally indulged in household street journey staples—“I love that kind of shit,” she says. She stopped by a pottery-making class in Tulsa, embarked on a zip-lining tour in Austin, and signed up for a ropes course in Australia. “I advocated for not being gone for longer than four weeks at a time without a break,” she says. “Performing is my actual favorite thing in the world to do. So when I feel like I don’t like it? That’s when I want to recalibrate so I can enjoy it again.”

Eilish and Finneas got here collectively on the Grammys in February, the place their Hit Me Hard and Soft B-side, “Wildflower,” gained Song of the Year. “It was a miracle,” she says. “Finneas and I thought it would be an underrated song. It was one of my favorites, but I was like, ‘This isn’t gonna be the hit. It’s a freaking guitar ballad!’”

Cameron tells me he was drawn to “Wildflower,” too, whereas slicing live performance footage. He says her efficiency of it’s the standout second within the movie. “I’m very, very fond of ‘Wildflower,’ ” Cameron says. “I mean, I like the up-tempo songs too, where she’s bouncing around like a crazy whirling dervish. But it’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the film. Everybody lights up the stadium with their phones; it’s almost like 10,000 candles get lit. We were blessed to have an amazing camera operator, a young guy named Cole Peterson, 22 years old, up there with a gimbal camera arched around Billie. She sustains these notes that are just phenomenal in that song. I think of them almost as operatic arias. It’s very beautiful.”

Shirt, Bottega Veneta. Necklace, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Recalling the scene, Eilish demonstrates her vocal melismas from the music for me. (She provides that she listens to herself on Spotify greater than every other artist, coming in at primary on her personal year-end Wrapped listing: “My friends make fun of me,” she says, however “I’m sorry, I make the music I want to listen to.”) “When I wrote the melodies for ‘Wildflower,’ I remember thinking, ‘These are fucking sick and I don’t know if people are gonna get it,’” she explains. “I’ve always been really inspired by Arabic singers—my dad and I have bonded over our love for Arabic music. Like, I freaking love [Lebanese singer] Nancy Ajram. She’s one of my favorite singers.”

It’s in these moments of musical reverie that Eilish indulges her extra romantic aspect. She says her favourite film of Cameron’s is Titanic, with a wistful sigh. “I hate to be so on the nose, but it’s a beautiful movie. There was like, me before I watched that movie, and me after I watched the movie. My friends and I watched it when we were 12, and it was the first day that I decided I would start swearing.”

Eilish has a fierce insurgent spirit. Upon accepting her newest Grammy Award in February, she riled up conservative politicians and commentators when she spoke out towards the escalating ICE raids, stating, “No one is illegal on stolen land.” And when she appeared on the WSJ. Magazine Innovator Awards in October, she overtly challenged billionaires within the room, together with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Star Wars creator George Lucas, to half with a few of their wealth. “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?” she requested the group. “People need empathy and help more than ever. Especially in our country.…If you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it.” Her speech wasn’t simply lip service. That identical night time, it was introduced that she had pledged $11.5 million of the income from her final tour, which reportedly quantities to rather less than 1 / 4 of her web price, to a number of charities and organizations. (She raised the cash by promoting particular “Changemaker” tickets to followers who wished to pay somewhat additional to assist fight meals inequality and the local weather disaster.)

Dress, Marc Jacobs. Brooch, Verdura. Ring, Massimo Izzo.

“I was raised like this,” explains Eilish of her consolation with talking out. “When you have this insane platform that you can use to advocate for people, but you’re not advocating for people because you don’t want to be controversial?” she says, petting Shark as he snoozes peacefully within the seat between us. “Why is it controversial to step in when someone’s getting bullied and try to stop it? Yeah, you’re probably gonna have to deal with some problems, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

In spite of her critics’ greatest efforts to tamp down her preventing spirit, what retains her coming again to the general public eye is the camaraderie she shares with her followers by her songwriting. “What I am going through actually isn’t just me, it’s everyone,” she says. “‘What Was I Made For?’ was such an intimate little window into my feelings. And in my head, I feel like, ‘Oh my God, I’m the only person who feels this way.’ And when you’re in a room with thousands of people singing back to you the lyrics that you wrote alone about something specific to you? And they have their entire own relationship to it? It’s the most magical thing in the world. So I make art and music to reach people, to help people.”

The live performance movie shines a lightweight on these followers, whether or not they’re in sleeping luggage exterior the venue or sobbing on the barricades. Many are interviewed within the movie, sharing tales of the songs that resonated most with them—songs about survival, loneliness, despair. Many of them arrived wearing a tomboyish fashion just like Eilish’s, citing her as the important thing to unlocking new avenues for his or her gender expression.

“Setting aside the quality of the songwriting, the emotionality and all—for her fans, it’s the fact that they grew up together,” Cameron says. “They’ve been through the teenage wars, and she was there for them. They watched her go through things, and they watched her turn it into art. Not just girls, but a lot of guys, too. There’s zero objectification, 100 percent identification. She says, ‘I’m going to wear my loose clothes. I’m going to be comfortable in my own skin, not as some virtuous role model, but to be a model of truthfulness to oneself.’”

For Eilish, being true to herself means giving credit score the place it’s due. “I’m not the first person who’s worn baggy clothes,” she says of her wardrobe, citing inspirations like Harlem vogue influencer Bloody Osiris and hip-hop icons Tyler, the Creator and Missy Elliott. But she additionally craved the liberty of motion afforded by these garments, and the ensuing gender euphoria of all of it. “I had a really, really toxic relationship with my body,” Eilish says. “I had a lot of eating issues. I remember putting on, like, a big shirt and the relief that I felt. At the same time, it was my love for hip-hop culture and wanting to be a man. This is the misogyny that we all have within us…which is that I didn’t want to be seen as feminine, and therefore weak. It’s not right. I’ve found a good way of not feeling like that.”

Shirt, Bottega Veneta. Necklace, Bulgari. Necklace, Van Cleef & Arpels. Bracelets, John Hardy.

She’s discovered herself. But she’s nonetheless discovering new dimensions. For one, she tells me she’s eyeing some performing alternatives. In March, Deadline reported that Eilish was in talks to make her movie performing debut in an upcoming adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar. Though the position itself is but to be introduced, director Sarah Polley, whose 2022 movie Women Talking gained the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, shall be on the helm. “Writing and directing a film is so much work. I don’t know if that’ll ever be a thing that I do, but the acting side [is what] I’m really interested in,” she says. “We’ll see where that takes us.”

According to Cameron, although, probably the most heroic position Eilish may play is herself. “I’ve been a serial offender in extolling the virtues of female power and its many dimensions,” Cameron says, musing on his previous movies. “[Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour] is just a continuation of that same motif as a filmmaker. I’ve gotten a rare opportunity to do an intimate portrait of a female artist I admire. If she had turned out to be a complete diva and a horrific person, I don’t think I’d feel about the film the way I feel right now. But I feel very proud of the film, and proud of her and what she does.”

Even if she is somewhat fatigued by the omnipresence of cameras round her, whether or not they be smartphones or Cameron’s cumbersome 3D machines, Eilish can already respect the worth of getting a time capsule of her most epic tour to this point. “Capturing a show that I can watch when I’m old and feel like I’m there again…it gives me chills,” she says. “And I’m so grateful that it’s going to live forever.”

Lead picture: Coat, Prada. Scarf, Miu Miu.

Hair by Benjamin Mohapi at Benjamin Salon; make-up by Emily Cheng at The Wall Group; manicure by Erin Leigh Moffett at Art Department; set design by Logan Rauhut; produced by 138 Productions.

This story seems within the May 2026 challenge of ELLE.

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