When Billy Corgan appeared as a surprise guest on Howie Mandel’s podcast in January to talk to Bill Burr about the small, but not impossible, chance that they were half-brothers, fans were divided. Was the entire exchange part of an ongoing bit, a running gag with Burr? Or was Corgan actually for real?
Turns out it’s the latter — or at least, as real as it can be. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman and The Magnificent Others podcast host, 57, tells PEOPLE that his appearance on Mandel’s podcast, which went viral for Burr’s awkwardly uncomfortable reception, was hardly a joke.
“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,” he explains. “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. You see jokes, but you also see kind of like, oh, there’s something there.”
Corgan even says he’s had close friends grill him on the matter, which stems from his stepmother once telling him there is a chance he and Burr share the same father, the result of Corgan’s dad’s days as a traveling musician (a story he told on Mandel’s podcast in November).
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“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.’ And then my friend said, ‘Well, I think you are,’” he recalls. “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.’”
The musician acknowledges that the story’s lack of a definitive answer is “part of what makes it intriguing” while heaping praise on Burr, 56, whom he calls “an amazing, talented and funny person.”
“It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s sort of strange,” he says. “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.”
The buzz surrounding the two stars began in January, when Burr was a guest on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast. During the sit-down, Mandel invited Corgan onto the show as a surprise guest, leaving Burr visibly uncomfortable.
“Did you ever think the fact that I never told that story… that maybe you shouldn’t?” Burr said to Corgan, who had been under the impression that Mandel had cleared his arrival with the comedian.
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The two confirmed that they’d never met before, and though they seemed to smooth things over, Burr appeared agitated, telling the rocker, “Listen, you’ve done well for yourself, I’m happy for you, but I just would prefer if you just kinda didn’t go around telling these f—ing stories. Like, why did you feel the need to do that?”
Corgan went on to explain that he’d shared the story because he’d run into Mandel and “the first thing he said to me was, ‘Here comes Bill Burr.’ And I go, ‘Do you know that story somehow?’ And he said, ‘What story?’ And so I told him privately that story and he said, ‘Oh you’ve got to say this on the air.’”
Corgan’s father was William Corgan, who died in 2021. He was raised in Illinois, while Burr was raised in Massachusetts, the son of a dentist named Robert, according to Vulture.
The “1979” singer launched his new podcast, The Magnificent Others, last month, and tells PEOPLE that his goal is to teach his audience something new about his guest star.
“If I can accomplish that and you can forget my end in it and really walk away going, ‘Gee, I never thought that about that person he had on,’ or ‘That’s cool, or I want to go check out their new record now because I wouldn’t have thought I would be interested and now I am,’ that’s what I’m after,” he says.
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