Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Eric Andre

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What you want to talk about?

That you're the trickster god of American comedy.

No, accept the title.

I insist that you accept it.

You want me to accept it?

I guess it's an unofficial title.

I accept.

This is Eric Andre. I admire him for a lot of reasons. Wildly creative, loves his awkward, and does comedy a little bit differently. Little Brother is coming out on Netflix. John Cena, he the star, you're the star. Who's the little brother?

I don't know. We'll duke it out and let the world decide.

Okay, so that is not—

Star supremacy.

All right, so it's a tease. Comes out late in June. Thank you Thank you for being on with us. Uh, this is all meant to be biographical, and I'm going to make an assumption off the top. Were you a rambunctious kid? Were you a difficult—

hyperactive? I had a hyperactivity disorder.

Did you get into a lot of trouble?

I got into a ton of trouble, very much so.

Any of it particularly memorable? We have some stories. I've got 11th grade, putting your head through a window.

But yeah, yeah, about— yeah, going to school, um, Being suspended all the time, going to school with no shoes on and mooning my friends and getting arrested doing pranks and stuff.

From what age?

As soon as I started passing puberty, I became fucking nuts. So probably like 6th, 7th grade. But I always got good grades, but I was like, I was, um, I had poor behavior. I would like do my math, like as the teacher was teaching the lesson, I would do the homework in real time in the class and then finish it and then just be like, "Lalalalalalalala, ooh, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop." In the '80s and '90s, they only give you sugar. They only give kids sugar. It was like my diet was like Froot Loops and Gushers. No nutrients.

And so what age do the pranks start? Like what, and who are you doing them for? Are you just amusing yourself?

I'm, yeah, I'm just like doing stupid, stuff at the mall, like, uh, trying to make my friends laugh and get any pretty girl's attention.

What age was this?

The latter part failed. Um, you know, that's like when I'm in high school, 16, 17, 18.

Okay, so how was the head going through a window?

That was bad. I was like, I used to bash my head against the locker because it would make a loud sound, and I loved Chris Farley growing up. So when my friend would walk by, I'd like slam my locker and I'd go, "Oh, I'm so stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I always make mistakes." I would do my little like Chris Farley impression, but I did it to one of the fire hose glass enclosures one time. And those things are made to break. And I like, I went, "I'm so stupid," and bashed my head through the glass. And it like sliced my head open. And I leaned back and it sliced the center of my hands open. Like I was Jesus. So I turned to my friend and just like went with the bit. At that point I was like, I gotta commit. So I went, stigmata, and I bled all the way from one building to the other building. And then my science teacher was like, what are you doing? You have to go to the nurse. You're like a mess. And I was like, oh really? And then I went to the nurse. The nurse was like, you gotta go to the ER.

You have to get stitches. Um, and the school cop knew I was like up to no good. And he's like, did you slip and fall or did you do that on purpose? I was like, I slipped and fell and then I had to get stitches. It was bad.

So are you just chasing the laugh? Are you in— do you need attention? What is happening here?

Some may say that. Some would say that. Seeking for validation.

Uh-huh. Because what—

But I think it is— I don't think it's all pathological. I think some— who doesn't like to laugh? Mm-hmm.

No, that's true.

Maybe Stephen Miller and Vladimir Putin.

Yes, everybody—

I'm making them laugh. Fucking dead-eyed.

I don't think those guys have laughed Pranks though are universal. You can make those guys— I think you can make one of them— I think you could make Putin laugh with the right prank.

It'd be a strange goal for me to pursue, but maybe.

Yeah, you like to—

I think there's cold blood in his veins.

You like big challenges. The things that you make—

It's quite the challenge.

Take some risks though.

Quite the risk. I don't know if I want to meddle. He seems—

you brought it up.

Intense.

Yeah. You're the one who created the scenario, not me.

That's right.

Yeah.

I started digging the hole, but now we're in the middle of the earth.

How often do you get hurt? Like, what is the— what is your injury history in pursuit of—

I mean, for a season of The Eric Andre Show, it's usually like one, one big trip to the hospital per, per season. But, but we, we, we got, we got better as we went along and I kind of know what to do and what not to do. But at first I didn't know. I didn't even know we did stunts with no pads and no stunt coordinator. I didn't even know what the term stunt coordinator— I never even heard the term until like the third season of the show. I was like, wait, you can hire a guy that teaches you how to crash into things? That's like amazing. And you can like, like crash into pads instead of concrete, like That would have been convenient information for the past few years because I was like, um, in a lot of pain.

But you were also making it up as you went along and taking pride in making a bit of a, you know, guerrilla show, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I, I had to like harness my ADHD and put it to, put it to use, you know. So it was like kind of like the perfect outlet for my my neurochemical cocktail.

You've arrived at different successes. Any part of you miss that kind of time? Not knowing what you were doing, stumbling around? Obviously you didn't have the resources or necessarily maybe the support that you wanted, but you were free to do what you want.

You're talking about like early days of Adult Swim?

Yeah, I'm talking about the early days of just trying to be you and develop the style that you developed.

Yeah. You know, there was, um, the highs were high and the lows were low. You know, some stuff worked better than others, but, uh, no regrets. No regerts, as they say.

But everything you were doing took hours and hours and hours and a great amount of risk. And I don't know what kind of pressure you were under. Yeah, I think it was your big opportunity.

I felt enormous pressure in the Eric Andre Show. I'm working, I would work like 18-hour days because I would— we would film 8 to 8, 8 AM to 8 PM in the studio, but I'd have to get there at 6 or 7 AM for pre-morning, like pre-production morning meetings, and then stay after to look at footage and do like end of the night meetings. And, you know, this is while I'm like getting injured and like getting arrested, um, and doing man on the street stuff. So like my central nervous system was just like shot. You know, it's hard. It's very hard when you're like on both sides of the camera.

And you're—

It's hard enough being on one side of the camera, let alone both.

But, and you're anxious to begin with, right? Or you wrestle with anxiety to begin with.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's go back a ways at the first notions of that. Like, when do you know that there's something roiling in you that is both fuel but unpleasant to live with?

Well, it's a little strange. Like, I've always had like a lot of anxiety since, since I was like my earliest memories, like, um, I'm like, I was afraid of the dark. I, I could barely like sleep through the night. I'd always go to my parents' room when I was little. I always, always think there was like monsters and aliens under my bed and in my closet, and I would like ruminate on, on, uh, I, I would have like obsessive loops of like, um, you know, anxiety ruminations, um, since as far as I back as I can remember, but both my parents have anxiety. My dad escaped Haiti, you know, he escaped Duvalier in Haiti, who was like a dictator. He was like the Pol Pot of Haiti. So he had PTSD and anxiety from that. And my mom's a Jew, so this kind of comes with the territory. So, you know, my dad, I think getting like that batch of neurochemicals from both my parents, set me on this journey of obsessive-compulsive thought loops and anxiety and hyperactivity. But yeah, what was the question? Wait, what was the question? How do you— how do you— how do I cope with it?

Or how do you come about harnessing it? But I was asking you where the beginnings, the nature, the roots of it. And so you're saying it's sort of in the home, right?

It's like, yeah, it's nature. It's nature and nurture. It's It's like kind of what I inherited from my parents, you know, their brain chemistry. And, but then also, you know, I picked a pretty nerve-wracking career to want to do, to have that much anxiety but want to do, pursue stand-up comedy and hitting camera pranks in the streets where I'm facing actual physical violence and danger or legal, you know, Criminal trouble also is like a very strange thing to walk towards for somebody who has anxiety.

But you did it, I would say, I guess purposefully. There was something— you didn't dream of being funny, right? You didn't dream of a career necessarily in stand-up, right?

No, I went to music school. I went to Berklee College of Music and I studied jazz and I was an upright bass player and that was my major. And I majored in songwriting and music business. And even when I finished school, I interned at a record label in New York. And kind of towards the end of school, that's when I started experimenting with stand-up comedy. And I loved it because I felt like a career in jazz, a degree in jazz is like having a degree in Sanskrit. You're like learning a dead language that you can't really do anything with. So I was looking up at my future like, you know, And the music I was making is not, um, catchy or popular. It's problematic. It's niche. It's niche, annoying, and absurd and problematic. So, so I was like, I felt like comedy had more of a merit-based system where if I got good at it versus getting good at playing jazz, I would at least have a career. Doing something, writing for a show, or I felt like there was value in— I knew I wanted to be in the arts and have a creative career.

I didn't want to work at H&R Block. So that would be bad. Yeah.

I don't think you'd do well there. Like, it wouldn't be so—

it wouldn't be— it's not my, you know, it's not my— no disrespect to the great accountants, all the CPAs listening, but that just wasn't my thing. And my dad was a doctor, you know, he went to med school and he came from the most, you know, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. And he is the American dream. But so he wanted me to go to med school or law school. And I just, I despised, I remember I, he paid for this tutor to help me study for the LSATs. And I studied for the LSATs for a year. And I read this like giant reference book, the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which is like, Like imagine reading a reference book, like reading a thesaurus, like, you know, it's miserable. And, you know, did all these like practice LSAT tests. And I remember going deep into Brooklyn at this rank when I was 21 years old to some college in some big historic college in like East Flatbush. I'm blanking on the name, but it's a very, very well-known college. And I sat and the proctor was like, all right, any last questions before we get started?

And I looked down at my Scantron and I broke my pencil in half and dropped it. And I got up and left after a year of studying. I was like, I don't want to do this at all. Oh my God. There's nothing in this for me. So I was like defiant. And my dad, like, he, I told him that I did that and he gave like a big inhale and a big exhale. And he went, well, you seem pretty determined. So I have to like support and admire that your determination, because he had the same spirit of determination to come to, you know, escape Haiti with $20 in his pocket, not speaking any English and kind of like hiding out in Harlem and Queens with his brother, my uncle, and then getting a student visa and then meeting my mom and then marrying her and then getting a green card and having my sister and then, you know, you know. And then he wasn't even considering med school then. He was, um, he was working odd jobs, and my mom was a public school teacher. They were like totally broke. And, uh, and then he was like, I, I think I want to go to med school.

My mom laughed in his face. She saw he was bullshitting. And my grandma, my mom's mom, was like, I think he's serious, and you should like— we should encourage him if he wants to do that. So he was, he was very, um, persistent and defiant himself. So I think he was like What can I do? This is what he wants to do. And I felt like determined to show him I could do it. So it was like, you know, defying him, but also channeling his spirit and his persistence.

I don't know what to make of the fact that when you were telling the story, your hands were shaking a little bit at—

That's just because I'm on Vyvanse and coffee. Because I'm zooted. And I'll read the dictionary again, brother.

It seems like, though, that's a fairly transformative story. And that reaction from your father seems shocking to me. It wasn't shocking to you.

It is shocking in hindsight, but it wasn't as supportive as my mom, who always had like this Montessori approach to everything I did and would like, like let me follow my nose as a kid and was always there and very involved and supportive. He was very like, absent, distant, and like he was a workaholic in my childhood. So we kind of like switched dynamics in adulthood where we became closer in adulthood. So I was, I was still kind of flustered that he wasn't like clicking his heels, um, going rah rah, six boom bah at any idea I came up with. But he was genuinely worried and he knew I always got straight A's and I had like, you know, I had like the, I had like a high GPA. He knew I was like really good at academics and so was he. So he wanted the best for his kid. You know, he escaped Haiti. He wanted, you know, safety for his kids. He was in New York in the '70s and it was very dangerous. My mom got strangled in an elevator when they lived in Queens and my sister was a baby. Then they moved to Miami in the '80s and it was very dangerous.

And their landlord was like on cocaine and they like, like our house got broken into several times. Then we realized it was like an inside job. Like the landlord would let like, like their family members know when we would leave the house and like they would break in and steal stuff. And so he's like going from like Haiti, you know, in the '40s, '50s, '60s where there's like, it's deteriorating into this. Uh, you have the Tonton Macou who were like the Khmer Rouge and like one of his friends got murdered. And they, they, they killed one of his family friends and because they mistook him for some other guy that they wanted to kill. So they didn't even kill the right person. So they killed one of his friends. And then when they found out that they killed the wrong guy, they went to his family and they beat all of them up. And they said, if you tell anybody, we'll, we'll come back and we'll kill all of you. So my dad and his siblings started like one by one trying to like escape. Um, and, um, So I think he was like miserable and just looking for safety and like foundation.

So he knew I was smart, but he wanted to— he, he wanted safety for him and his family, you know, because he was just going through these miserable— my dad was very bookwormy. He was like, he was like, he looked like Arthur Ashe and Steve Urkel, you know, he was like, He's a shy, nerdy guy. So to go through all these violent— to be in all these violent places, you know, for the first 35, 40 years of his life, he was miserable. So that's why we left when I was 4. When we found out the landlord was breaking into the house, we went to the suburbs because he was over it. And then I grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, with all elderly people. And I used to resent that because it was so boring. And it was just like Publix supermarket and Walgreens everywhere. There was no, like, culture. There was no— nothing to do. So I resented the boredom. But then I, you know, when I now as an adult, when I look back on my dad's life and the misery he had to go through, I could see why he just wanted to live in a cul-de-sac.

Yeah.

I mean, well, you just described it all as trauma and then you started talking about the trauma and that's, that's, there's a lot under that umbrella of what it was that was in your house that would explain some anxiety.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I experienced the landlord stuff. I was like 2, 3 years old when that was happening. So I don't really remember that stuff, but That's why we left Miami and moved to the suburbs, because Miami in the '80s was a little bit—

well, nothing feels safe.

Yeah, nothing. He has no— yeah, he has no foundation underneath him. Yeah, nothing feels safe. And now he's married and now he has a second kid. So he is like— he's just wanted, you know, he's like, where can I find fucking safety?

You know? So why so theatrical on the breaking of the pen?

And I was so frustrated. It was like this, like surge, this like orgasm of resentment looking at this Scantron and having to go through this tedious, miserable, boring standardized test for law school. And law school is so brutal. And I was meeting other people in law school telling me how much of a grind it is. And I remember my friend Greg, his father is a lawyer and he was like, never do this. He's like, he would tell us not to do it. He was like, just to sift through the minutia of contracts or whatever kind of law you're in, you know, whatever, depositions, affidavits, just to seek through every paragraph 3, line 6, page 75, all day, every day. My assistant's father's a lawyer, and he said, he goes, I remember every night my dad would finally decompress from work, we'd finally have dinner, and then bing bong, someone would show up with like a stack of papers, and that was like He would just kind of doze off and realize he had to go to work.

Your soul would turn to ash in a job like that.

Yeah, it seems like hell unless you are, unless you thrive going through the minutia paperwork. Like, I don't like reading an email more than 2 sentences.

You know what I mean?

I don't have the attention span. So, and, you know, I read books about like, The History of Cocktails. Like, that's the only— that's what, like, that's the last 4 books I read. Yeah, but you— so, you know, yeah, it's not for me. So I don't know, I just felt so flustered and frustrated that he was, like, pressuring me to do this and not supportive of me going to the jazz school and not supportive of the comedy or anything I wanted to do creatively. I felt this, like, it just, like, I just looked at that Scantron and I went fuck this. And I go, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. I don't know how I'm gonna make a career in comedy. It seems terrifying. And it's still terrifying, but it— I just was like, what's the point of this life? You gotta, you know, at least try and fail than to never try.

But you decided in that moment it was gonna be comedy? Like, like snapping the pencil?

It was gonna be something, and it was gonna be my way, and I was gonna be creative, and I I was like, and he was kind of like, oh, well, you could be a lawyer as like a day job and do comedy at night. And then I was talking to my friends in law school and, or who were lawyers. They're like, this isn't a day job, man. This is like 12 hours is like a short day. So this is a full, this is a career. This is, you really gotta want it.

You probably would've done well on the LSAT. You were probably ready for it.

Maybe.

Correct?

Yeah. I, I, I, but like, I would've done well if I really wanted to be a lawyer. And loved law and had like, like I had no, even with studying and preparing for it, I didn't have it in my, you know, you had music in there.

Blarf.

Yeah. Blarf.

Blarf. Your band Blarf was somewhere in there.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so you weren't good enough at that.

And I was like, I'd rather be broke and happy than rich and sad. I'd rather be, you know, like happiness and love are wealth. There's other types of wealth.

Well, you— you— were you broken happy when you were starting in stand-up comedy?

I was every emotion, but I was much happier than the year I took to study for the LSATs and thinking about going back to school and going to law school, going from jazz school to law school. I was like— and I remember going to NYU, this NYU Like law school with my tutor, my LSAT tutor. I remember going to this like law school mixer. I don't know what it was. It was like a hang session at NYU and all the people there were miserable and they seemed like kind of like cagey and mean and not sociable. And I was like, this doesn't— like all everything in my gut was like, this doesn't feel like a crowd I want to be around. Maybe they were just going through hell because they were in year 1 and 2 of law school and I was kind of picking their brain. And those are, you know, law school is pretty brutal. Um, getting your JD and then it never ends. Then you got to pass the bar and that's miserable. That's misery too. I know people that have like, they told me they got nosebleeds, you know, right at when they finished the bar, massive migraine and they had to go to the ER when they finished the bar exam.

So it seems like out of the frying pan into the fire. I don't know. So you really, really, really have to love and want law to be your Unsere Empfehlung für deinen Podcast: Frisches Obst und knackiges Gemüse von Aldi.

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Aldi, gute I, I want to get to broke in New York as you're trying to make it, but first, how do you rein in the anxiety? Like, where, where along—

It was very hard in the beginning, and I, I, I— when I got here, like, the first 5 years, it was just knowing that I'll eventually one day get over my stage fright by, like, exposure, um, exposing myself to these nerve-wracking stand-up situations.

Sometimes literally, because you're getting naked.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also that's why I was like, I scream and yell so much in my standup. Cause it's like, I'm trying to drown out like the, the anxious thoughts. Cause I would like completely be out of body on stage. I would, I would have like full-blown panic attacks. I still do sometimes. And I sweat profusely. Like it never fully goes away. And some anxiety is good. You want some, you don't want to be completely blasé. You want to be like, have that little electric charge. So that you can, because your mind is in 15 different places when you're on stage. You're thinking about the old joke, if there's still life in it, the new joke, what's working, what's not working. Some guy drops a glass, some guy makes a rude comment. You want to be able to like, you know, clap back at a heckler or like break the tension of something awkward that's happening in the moment. You got to check in with all the audience members, like their collective hive mind. And each of them individually. What's, what's working better than others? What feels like a laugh of sympathy? What's like worked yesterday?

And why is it not? Why is that joke that worked so well yesterday not working today? So you want a little bit of that anxiety, but you don't want so much that you're, you're, you're dissociating from your body like you're on ketamine or something.

Well, you really just let us into your head there. That sounded like a bit of torment and you're sort of enjoying dancing among all the landmines, but it's scary.

It's bungee jumping, you know, it's, um, it's a sport. I like that Seinfeld compared it to a sport because it feels— people are like, how high are you when you're writing stuff for Eric Andre Show? I'm like, I think that's the only time I'm not high. I'm like, unless you count caffeine, uh, you know, when I'm writing, uh, it's That's the L sets for me. I'm like, I'm obsessing over, you know, I'm like recording my set. I'll send it to a transcription service and I'll read through it the next day and I'll like highlight what was good and I'll try to bring it into the next set and I'll try to put it in the teleprompter. I'll tape notes to the floor of the stage if they don't have a prompter, if it's a smaller venue. And I'll kind of like every night repeat the process where I'm like recording the set, trying to improvise within a written joke to find new life in it, transcribe, sending it to transcription service, reading the transcripts the next morning, crossing out what doesn't work, reordering it. Um, that's me sifting through the minutia paperwork that I enjoy.

Uh, the obsessive compulsive sculpting of something that is specifically yours, your voice created by you and shown to the world. World confidently because you've had time to sculpt it.

Yeah, I love Chris Rock. Had a— he goes, he said, it's not a stand-up normal, it's a stand-up special. So you better make it special. You better— he, he, he, he taught me a lot. And, and to see his process and how obsessed and pinpointed and, and how he can like refine a joke over and over and over and over again. It's like, it was really impressive to like do a few spots on the road with him, uh, um, years ago before my first special. So like, but, but he has a point. Like, you better, um, make it count. It's very hard to hold an audience's attention for 60 minutes live, and it's especially hard to hold an audience's attention for 60 minutes just talking, um, when they're sitting on their couch playing with their phone and their kids are screaming and like, um, you know, and Netflix only counts like if the viewer makes it to the end, you know, so it's pretty— you got a lot of competition. So you're, you're special, better be special.

When you say panic attacks, you mean that literally, diagnosably so?

Oh yeah, full out of body as if I'm being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger. Caveman primal fear. But I had to get over it. You know, I finally, when I moved to LA, I was like, I can't take it anymore. I started going to therapy. My first early therapist that I went to, who I don't even remember their name, I only went to a few sessions, suggested meditation. I got into meditation, Transcendental Meditation, right away that I still do twice a day. And like, you know, um, therapy, exercise, meditation, diet, like, they sound like such simple things, but they're very easy.

Well, your mind sounds like a blessing and a curse, right? If you don't tame it, it can be a fishing line that just goes out to sea.

Yeah, I think any creative person, their strengths are their weaknesses. So whatever makes them this creative genius also, um, can be their downfall. I mean, Kanye West is a great example, you know. Obviously he's, uh, very musically inclined, but he's a, uh, neurodivergent narcissist, megalomaniac, neo-Nazi, question mark, with a sock on his head. Uh, but he's cranked out nothing but number one hits. I mean, I think he's toe-to-toe with Stevie Wonder for Billboard number one hits and Grammys and everything else, and has $800 million in his bank account. So, some parts of all that psychosis is working for him creatively.

So has the adult you come to terms with this thing that roils within you?

Yeah, and you know, I avoided medication for a long time. I had some, like, pride and ego thing, and I don't know— my dad was a psychiatrist, so I don't know if it's being the son of a psychiatrist, I was like, "No, I'm not." I meditate now, I do exercise, I do therapy. And then in my 40s, I was like, I can't take this anymore. Like, I have to have a little bit of— and, you know, my therapist is like, this is not a natural world we live in. We did not create a— in a post-industrial technological world, we did not create a normal world. For millions of years, our brain and body just had to, like, forage for blueberries and fish and then take naps and, you know, have bisexual caveman orgies. That was it. You just had to get Blueberries, fish, it was a simpler time. Fuck everybody, everybody's fucking, you know, sucking each other's dicks and vaginas.

That's all you got to do.

And now that's easy, that we can all— everybody here can do that, right?

But you throw it, you throw the devices into the mix, and it's over.

This, all this, what is this? What are we, what are we doing right now? Our brain and body did not evolve for any of this. No, this is like fucking insane. This is psychotic. Money isn't real. You know, we were like, we, we spend our whole life pursuing this theoretical thing that we give this like value to, to buy weird things that like we don't really— our brain, our organs don't really need. So it's, it's, it's insane. Everything's insane. So why wouldn't, um, There was no war for the first few million years of, of, um, Homo sapiens. It's only when agriculture started 10,000 years ago that it was like, no, this is my farm, motherfucker. And my sons are gonna shoot your ass or throw an arrow at your ass. And it's like, oh shit. So there, you know, like even war is new and the PTSD from war and all that. So, you know, so, um, yeah. So, you know, it's a struggle. So I, I, I, Like, I added medication to the mix recently, and I was kind of like, why didn't I start doing this 20 years ago? 30 years? Like, when I was like 10, I should have started all these meds.

So you were stubbornly proud, and then soon thereafter it dissolves into something that makes it more manageable, and you're like, what kind of idiot am I?

Once you find the meds that work, you're like, what the fuck was I doing? How was I coping? These were at my fingertips and I was like, no, I don't know. I wasn't so like, haha, no. I was like, nah, I don't think, I don't know, you gotta take it every day. But then I do street drugs from a guy I met at a gas station in Costa Rica. I snorted cocaine cut with Tylenol and drywall, no problem. But then I'm like, Zoloft? I won't put that poison in my body. Potty. Now pass me a bottle of rum and the cheapest cocaine in New Orleans. You know, so I don't know, nothing makes sense. I think it makes sense. That's all my friends, by the way. Like, my friends that like wouldn't get the vaccine. I won't get the vaccine. I don't know what's in it. I'm like, I've done the grimiest drugs. We've picked pills off the floor of your car. When we were in college and just popped them in our mouth and see if we took the elevator up or down. Like, cut the shit.

But they're anti-vaccine.

Cut the shit. They're anti-vax and then they're at, you know, Fish at the Sphere doing, you know, God knows whatever.

How do you recall favorably or unfavorably the details involved with being banned from the Republican National Convention?

I was, I was like happy that it was just a ban and not, um, jail time because highest level of security probably in the world, right? Presidential level. So it's, it's, it's not just the local and it, what was it? Was that, uh, were we in DC? No, it was Cleveland. The RNC was in Cleveland. So it was like Cleveland police. It was every bureau. It was like, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, KGB, whatever, you know. So once like a team of 10 super cops come up to you, your heart sinks and you're like, I'm gonna be in jail. And I think it was on the weekend, so it sucks getting arrested on the weekend because you gotta wait till Monday for, for anything, for a phone call. And so I'm like, oh God, I'm gonna be in jail for the week. And we got in the elevator And when the elevators closed, you know, we were— I was wearing it. I was dressed like a schoolgirl. They were called the Freedom Girls that we were, that we were satirizing. And as soon as the elevator doors closed, the cops all looked at each other and started laughing.

And I was like, oh, and then they just escorted us out and they went, have a nice night, gentlemen. And I was like, oh my God, I'm not getting arrested. 'cause I had just gotten arrested for something we filmed in the main season of the show. So I was relieved that it was just like a ban. It wasn't even really a ban. We got our press passes in a sneaky way from CNN, but sneaky 'cause we didn't really tell 'em what we were doing. We were just like, "We wanna interview people." And I did. So once CNN caught wind of that, our passes got revoked. So I couldn't get into the actual DNC, 'cause the DNC was the next week. We were also gonna prank Mike Pence on Air Force Two, where the vice president flies, his private airplane. And our lawyer, our lawyer was, for pranks, had been used to working on other prank shows. And I've— we've never got a quicker response from him. He goes, "Guys, if you prank the vice president on his airplane in federal airspace, you're not in trouble with, like, the local Podunk police force. You're in trouble with the FBI on a federal level." and you could see you and the whole crew, everyone in front of the camera, everyone behind the camera can be behind bars for like 25 years if they feel like it.

Was it a good prank? Was it?

We hadn't even figured it out. We just had a way. We had a mole on the inside. Somebody knew somebody that knew somebody that we were like, and we had the press passes. This is before. And so we were going to like We knew we couldn't get on— well, well, hold on, it wasn't— they weren't elected yet. This is 2016, so maybe it was his private jet. Maybe it wasn't Air Force Two because technically Obama—

you were going to get into a lot of trouble. It was a dangerous thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my lawyer had never responded to us faster.

What do you regard as the most dangerous situation you've placed yourself in? Because you were almost stabbed, right?

Yeah. And the guy said, I always bring my gun to work because it was in a dodgy neighborhood in Atlanta. And he goes, but I forgot it. And he goes, you guys are so lucky I only had my knife and I was just, I was just going to stab you. That was on Bad Trip. We, me and Lil Rel Howery, that was the first prank he ever filmed. He never did pranks. And he was like, yeah, I got this. Yeah, it'd be easy. And he was miserable the whole time we filmed. He didn't know. He didn't know how stressful, like, pranking feels. It feels very, very uncomfortable. So, so much more than a soundstage or a set. So we had this bit where our, our, our characters do drugs the night before. We're playing with a Chinese finger trap. We, we, we pass out unconscious from doing like this, this cornucopia of drugs accidentally. Um, and, uh, we wake up with our penises stuck together in a Chinese finger trap. And so the prank was we ran up to this guy on the golf course, asked him to get us out of the Chinese finger trap.

And then we went— Ke Tao, my director, he's like, we're shooting in Atlanta. We should go to like the hood and go to like a hood, like a ratchet-ass barbershop, like to get a big reaction. And I was like, great idea. And we went into this Black barbershop in a precarious neighborhood in Atlanta. The guy, the barber went into— 'cause we just— and we revealed it. Kitao goes, "Reveal like that your penises are stuck together. Like, don't have them see it at first." So me and Rel like walked in like all weird and the barber's like cutting a guy's hair and he's the proprietor of his own shop, you know, he takes pride in his shop. And we slowly revealed like gay magicians. We were like, "Ta-da!" Like a Cirque du Soleil. We were like, "Do you have scissors to cut us out of this? Our penises are stuck together." and he thought we were just eccentric perverts on the loose in his establishment, in his neighborhood. And he snapped. He went into— his eyes turned red, like cartoon red. And he was like, oh, hell no. And he started looking for something, which I found out later was his gun.

And then he's like, fuck, goddammit, I knew I left something at home. And, you know, Georgia is like an open carry state. My friend got arrested because he had weed on him and guns and I was like, did the gun charge get— and he goes, no, no, all the guns I have are totally legal in Georgia. That's— weed is a felony. Went to jail for just the weed, and guns, they're like, guns. So he grabs a knife, starts chasing us out, and me and Rel can barely run because we're joined. It was a prosthetic, it wasn't a real cocks, but it was like this stretchy, realistic-looking prosthetic double dildo Chinese finger trap, and we're like harnessed together so we can't even run. And Rel is running for his— we're running for our lives. Literally. And the thing snaps, like rolls under a car. And I look and I had my security, like, was across the street, this guy that looked like Blade. And I go— and our safe word was popcorn, but I was so nervous I forgot the safe word. And I just said goosebumps. I don't know why. I was like white out with fear.

Like, I was just like, goosebumps, goosebumps, goosebumps. So this guy that looks like Blade, who's like armed to the T across the street, he's like, goosebumps?

He's like, goosebumps?

I'm like, the guy— and I point to the guy's knife. I was Popcorn, popcorn! And so he's like, hey, and he like kind of like casually like held the guy's wrist. So then the guy's like, who the fuck is this guy? And then we're like, we're doing a hidden camera prank thing. And the guy went from a murder rage to like being so relieved that like eccentric perverts weren't on the loose. Terrified because he doesn't know if we're like pederasts or what's going on. He doesn't know what's going on. He's just like, this has to stop. And it's up to me to be the judge, jury, and executioner. And he was— he went from a murder rage to being like, this is a hidden camera, right? And he was like, oh man, y'all got me, man, this is hilarious. Yeah, release form, no problem. Hey, when's this come out? Hey, you shouldn't do this shit in that— this neighborhood, you're gonna get killed. I always bring my gun to work, I must have spaced. And, um, Rel quit the movie and we had to beg, and I had to talk, and Tiffany Haddish wasn't even attached to the movie.

I had to like I had to like talk to Tiffany to talk to Rel. Rel wouldn't answer my phone calls. He knew I was trying to get him back on the movie. And I'm texting him and he's like, I have kids and you almost got me killed. And I go, I know. And that's my fault. And I had to call Tiffany because she did a bunch of pranks for MTV and she helped me campaign to bring Rel back. We had to have like a talk with his manager. It was bad. It was bad. And then, and then, and MGM, which was the studio at the time. Was like, what? Who are you guys? And what is this movie? And like, why are— why did— why did we almost get the other star? And Get Out had just come out. So they were very hot on Rel. They had no idea who I was. So they hated me. And they— they're like, the guy that just had this, like, this heat from Get Out that made $300 million. We almost got him killed day one. So it was bad. It was bad, but it was the reason that Tiffany— so Tiffany called me and she goes, dude, did you almost get Rel killed doing this?

I'm doing a prank movie. And I go, yeah. And then like my heart sank. I was like, I don't want that to get out. And then she goes, dude, I love that type of shit. I love pranking people. Can I be in your movie? And I was like— and Girls Trip had just come out. So Get Out just came out and Girls Trip just came out and Rel's about to quit. And Tiffany is so intrigued that I almost got Rel killed and dying laughing from it and knowing what the prank was. That she was like, sign me up. And she was doing 4 movies at the same time. She's like, I can give you 5 shoot days. And her part originally was this female wrestler we found from, from like the women's wrestling league. And she had to drop out. So we had no— we had no bad guy role. So she was like, I got 5 free days. I'm down. And, and her part was usually really small and her part just kept expanding, expanding because she was so good.

I have a ton of questions, the first of which is, have you considered for all the funny things in that story, if you had indeed been shot and died on that barbershop floor, how your family would have found you and just the idea that you would have died as a man in an interlocking penis situation.

Yeah, it would have been very bad. It would have been very bad. My family would have been very upset, obviously. But, but, you know, at that time I was like, awesome, we got great footage. I wasn't— I was like, if we're driving people to the point of homicide, we must be getting— well, considering homicide is that, that I know I'm getting great footage.

One of the other questions I was going to ask you is why, and the answer is that, correct? Yeah.

I was like, if my competition for the stakes of a narrative hidden camera movie, which there's only been 2 or 3, If my competition— not even competition, but if the bar is set by Sacha Baron Cohen and Johnny Knoxville, who are willing to die for a prank, and they've told me some of the stuff they filmed that was more dangerous than— and they didn't even air it. I was like, they've set the bar so high that I knew I had to get some stuff of equal terror and danger. To even compete in this, in this.

But why though? The next step on that, because you need to be the best at that, because you need to push the boundary.

I need the first movie to be a hit or I'll never get that opportunity again.

And so, uh, the— so when you talk about the details of Bad Trip, you made next to no money on that, right? It took you years.

Yeah, 7 and a half years from like the earliest writings to finally convincing one and only company to take a risk, to take a chance on it because we had no script. We were just going off of Jeff Tremaine attaching himself as a producer because he made half a billion dollars for Paramount doing all the Jackass movies, directing all the Jackass movies and co-creating Jackass. And he was our mentor the entire way. And Kitao and I coming out of Adult Swim and not knowing anything about the film business or how to make a film. Let alone a narrative hidden camera prank film, which is like completely experimental. And, and it comes with a ton of trial and error. And so what was your question?

It made next to no money.

Oh, yeah. So, so it was going to— it was supposed to come out— it was supposed to premiere at South by 2020, March 2020. And COVID hit. And like a week before we were about to fly to Austin, Texas, I was working on one of the seasons of The Eric Andre Show. We're in the writers' room at the beginning of the process, and I got the call like, oh, Apple just dropped out. Oh, Netflix just dropped out. All these big companies started dropping out. Oh, I think like Spike Jonze was premiering some big movie. He's not doing it anymore there. And my heart started to sink. And my dad's like, dude, they're canceling like soccer games, like big soccer games, stuff like that's like way, way, way, way bigger production and marketing departments than what we had going on at MGM. But it was a blessing in disguise ultimately in the long run, as painful as that was. And I didn't take any money. The movie was made for very little money. We took no money up front and we wanted profit participation on the back end so that if it had theatrical success, box office success, we would make a lot of money.

So I took no money up front. I just took the minimum indie SAG-AFTRA rate for however many weeks of shooting. So it was like, at the end of the day, after all of my rep's commission and Uncle Sam paying Uncle Sam, I made less than $20,000. I think it was probably like $17K for 8 years of work. So, so then the movie was nowhere. MGM tried to sell it to Quibi behind our backs. Quibi was not so successful. And the only reason we found out is because Jeff Tremaine, in his contract, said he had final cut. So they called us out of the blue. They were like, hey, can you guys cut the movie into 8 iPhone ratio segments? And they were like, what are you talking about? And they were like, oh, we're just trying to sell the movie to Quibi for a loss. Like, whatever, just get rid of it. They were just like purging everything that they spent money on. And we were like, why not try to sell it to Netflix? They're like, nah, we tried to send it to Netflix, they passed. I go, what do you— And my producer, Dave Bernat, God bless him, he was like, who did you send it to?

And they're like, trust us, we sent it 3 times. Turns out they sent it to the wrong department. They didn't even send it to the film department. They sent it to a person that just started working there. So Dave sent it to the head of the film department at Netflix, and he goes, where did this movie come from? This is brilliant. This is hilarious. Yes, we'll buy this movie off of MGM, and we'll promote the shit out of it, and we'll buy it at like twice what— double what Quibi was gonna spend on it. And if it went to Quibi, no one would ever have seen this movie. So God bless Netflix. God bless Dave for fighting so hard for this movie. And Adam at MGM fought for it tooth and nail. So, so, you know, if it wasn't for those guys, and it wasn't for Netflix, the movie would have— and then, you know, It was certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. 40 million people watched it in the first 28 days.

So that's how it became a blessing. It became a blessing.

It became a blessing because it was number one in the US and number one in the United States for weeks on end. And it was— it was culturally a success. And I had— and then like I found out, like, you know, all these big filmmakers watched it. Obama saw it, watched it like 3 times in a row. And like, you know, so it's like Dave is like, this, this is a form of wealth. I know we didn't make any money. Dave made no money. So he's like, this is, this is the only wealth we could ask for, how many eyeballs and how it like reached this like cultural kind of zeitgeist thing. And it was Certified Fresh for a movie that has all this like dick and poop humor to be certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes because comedies usually do not do well at all on— like, documentaries do the best with critics and comedies do typically the worst with critics. And I heard, uh, I went to a Robert McKee, like, one of his, like, um, basically what that the, the character from Adaptation is based on. I went to one of his writing seminars years ago.

And he said, "Critics hate comedy because the audience gets to be the critic, because if you're laughing, it's working. If you're not laughing, it's not working. So critics are out of a job." So he goes, "Critics historically resent comedy." But I think the win for Bad Trip was the fact that it showed so much humanity from the people. It never felt like we were punching down, like we were prank people, but for the most part, it showed It showed especially Black people and working-class people, like, being good Samaritans in the majority of the situations.

Is that what you were going for?

No, that was like a happy accident. I knew that my character, because he wasn't Borat or Knoxville's old grandpa character who are— Borat you get sympathy for because he's from Kazakhstan, he's in America, and he's He's from a rural, unknown, you know, far away mystical land. And he's just using Kazakhstan as like almost like a, almost like a, like where Balki Bartokomis was from, or Andy Kaufman's foreign man character. It's like an evolution of those guys. So you kind of sympathize with Borat instantly because he doesn't know any better. He's from a rural gypsy town and he's doing like the best he can. And he's just using like his like more rustic and provincial kind of ways in this modern, you know, technological society. Johnny Knoxville as the old man, an elderly man, is way more sympathetic than a middle-aged man. So me doing that movie in my 30s, I was just a dude. So we realized early on, Miki Tauber, like, you know, my persona is to be like, you know, emotionally volatile and violent and breaking stuff and destructive. But he goes, This character has to be more like Chris Farley, where like none of the violence or destruction is intentional.

He has to just be klutzy. He has to be like a golden retriever with a tennis ball in the house that didn't mean to knock over the fine china, but just got so excited that everything he does is just this blunderous giant accident. I put my hand in the blender. I had my dick stuck in a, you know, Chinese finger trap. I get buttfucked by a gorilla. Um, but it's all in this, in the pursuit pursuit of— and we, we borrowed heavily from Dumb and Dumber and, and, um, also, uh, uh, When Harry Met Sally are our two biggest comps for the, the, the plot of the movie. Like, I, I really am taking a chance, a bet on love. I'm in love with this woman. I'm driving across country. Everything was like— my character had to be likable for 90 minutes, where Eric Andre Show is only 11 minutes. It's a quarter-hour show, so I don't have to be likable. I can be as psychotic and volatile as I want to be. But this character, you had to invest in his journey and what his brother— and the abuse his brother's going through from the bully.

You had to like sympathize with them for 90 minutes. So that takes a different type of prank to happen. And they were all like, we call them help me, help me pranks on Punk'd. I worked with some of the Punk'd writers on this. They call them help me, help me pranks. It's a way to get somebody in and invested in the prank rather than being like, bah, and being abrasive. You kind of push people away. You don't want to push people away. You want them to get invested, believe in the absurdity of the situation, and like get involved. So it was a lot of the pranks were help me, help me pranks.

Sacha Baron Cohen at one point couldn't do Ali G characters anymore because too many people knew him. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you're serious about something and nobody believes you because you're known as the prankster?

All the time, every day. Uh, I can't think of a specific example, but I've been like, you know, some tragic event has happened, or, you know, somebody close to me passed away, and I've been like in public when I find out the news, crying in public, and someone just come up to me like, dude, I gotta get a selfie with you, dog. And like tears are rolling down my face, and I'm like, uh-huh. You still got it, dude. Yeah. So I remember I was at a coffee shop writing and this guy was like doing something, behaving odd, and he's like looming over me and I look up and I'm like, are you okay? And he's like, he's like sick. And he goes, sorry, I've been trying to force myself to vomit in front of you to get your attention. And I was like, you got it. And then he went blah and he vomited and it like splattered up like like close enough to my shoes where I just like grabbed my laptop and my backpack and I like, this is in New York, in the East Village, I ran around the corner and like calling an Uber, looking for a taxi, running for my life.

Wires are dragging behind me.

Thought that you'd understand him as a person who throws up to get someone's attention, that you and he can connect there like strangers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was like, well, I did create, you know, my own personal hell for myself. By doing the same thing. I can't blame— I didn't blame him. I was like, you win, you got it. You know, it's like your dad looked at you when you—

look, well, you're determined.

You're like, well, you vomited.

You learned something from me, kind of. That's art, performance art of some sort.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You honor me, you flatter me with what it is that you've done.

My dad was so stressed watching the Eric Andre Show. I don't think he made it through many episodes. Yeah, bad trip. He was like I had to tell him that it was number one. I had to show him this map of where it was. Number was like number one in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, all these African countries all throughout Asia. I was like, it's number one in America and it's number one in the world. And I had to like show him like data and pie charts and stuff. And he like still couldn't wrap his head around it. And I was like, I was like, I was like, you know, my dad's a Black immigrant who pushed his way through med school and became, you know, graduated top. So he loved Obama. And I was like, Obama watched dad, trying to like get him to, he didn't believe me. I was like, no, I hung out with, I met Michelle and Sasha, or not Michelle, I'm sorry, Sasha and Malia at a party randomly because My friend, who's a director's son, went to Harvard at the same time as them. And then I go— and they introduced themselves and I was like, they look familiar.

And I go— and then— and, and, and Malia hugged me and she goes, Bad Trip is, uh, the most culturally important movie I've seen in my entire lifetime. And I was like, did your dad watch it? And she was like, he watched it 3 times. So I told my dad that to be like, see, it's significant. And I didn't make any money. So my dad really— my dad understands green. He understands money. But I didn't make any money. So I'm like trying to— and he didn't believe me. He's like, uh-huh. I told him that whole story. I go, Obama watched it 3 times. He's like, sure.

Yeah. Well, he thinks you're a prankster. He thinks you're not telling the truth.

I wanted to tell my mom. I was like, tell him. She's like, I don't know what's getting permeated and what's not.

Well, I don't know if this would be the example or if there would be another, but if you think of the moment that you break the pencil and you're done with the LSAT, that you want to show your dad, look, I made the right choice.

Yeah.

Is that like, which one of your projects is the one that you point to as like, no, I, I did the correct thing even though it literally almost killed me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, it's frustrating because he died right before I won the Emmy and I took my mom to, as my date to the Emmys, and I was riding the car back, I was like, 'Fucking dad had to die right before I won this fucking thing.' She's like— and she was like, 'No, he knew you were on your way.' And, you know, so, uh, yeah, me and my sister still have his ashes. We got to figure out what to do with them. Doug Stanhope did the best thing. He's so genius. He snorted his mom's ashes. I was like, 'God damn, I wouldn't do that to my dad because I know he'd be missing.' Like, I want to, like, you know, Disrespectful.

Yeah, yeah.

But I feel like Doug had a very different relationship with his— maybe I'm not supposed to tell that. I've heard that through many sources through the grapevine, so I figure it's public information. I apologize to Doug Stanhope if that wasn't supposed to be public. But I just thought that was so creative and brilliant, you know, because I'm like, I always wanted this trip to Paris with him, and I was going to scatter his ashes in Paris. My mom's like, why are you bringing his ashes to Paris? They're going to harass you at the airport, and they're going to— think it's a bomb or something, just throw 'em out. I go, I'm not gonna throw out Dad's ashes. I would go, what'd you do with Grandma's ashes? She goes, I threw 'em out. I go, you threw out Grandma's ashes, Mom? It's like Jeffrey Dahmer, that's sociopathic. Don't you want closure? And then you say, you and Uncle Bob and Aunt Ruth, don't you guys wanna stand together? I threw 'em out, it's over. She had a good life, throw 'em out. Don't bring 'em to Paris. So I'm like, I don't know what this— me and my sister, they're sitting in my sister's garage.

We gotta go do something with them. Like, maybe I pour them through the Emmys. I'm like, you see, Dad, this is like a statue that— I don't know. But I, I didn't get to take it to Paris, so I guess I'm gonna scatter in Paris. I don't know. I don't know what the fuck to do with these things. My mom told me to throw them in the garbage. She threw my grandmother in the garbage. I grew up with my grandma in the house. I was offended. She goes, why are you offended? It's my mom. I go, it's my grandma. You don't throw her out. Just say, I don't know, Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu. Throw them in the air. Fucking psychopath. I was nuts.

It's an excellent stream of consciousness where you're really letting it go on the vulnerability, where you're reminding yourself in the middle of the conversation, I gotta do something with my dad. Yeah, I gotta take care of that. They're just— they're there. We keep—

and then we're spooked by it. I was like— my sister's like, take the urn. I don't, I don't want— I go, I don't want that urn. And, and, and my stepmom goes to my sister, you're the, you're the elder, you got to take it. My sister was like, this gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I go, I don't want it. So they're like— my poor dad's sitting in my sister's garage, but he doesn't care. When he was Even before he died, he's like, cremate me, whatever, throw me in the ocean, I'm fish guts, who cares.

But the elder though, what are we doing? We're royalty now? Like, what the elder? What are the rules here?

You know what, my stepmom dropped that one and I was like, that's my out. I was like, yeah, that is true. Right, that is the situation. You know, you only have one dad, so when he dies, you don't know what the fuck to do. So yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom's still alive. So it was like my first parent. So I was like, yeah, that is the tradition.

I have a lot more that I want to ask you. Unfortunately, we're out of time. So tell the people before I let you go here what it is that you're trying to accomplish with Little Brother.

You know, this is me and Cena getting to do like a version of— I say it's like What About Bob meets Parasite. Where we get to be this like Planes, Trains, Automobiles odd couple.

He's smart and clever, man.

He's very, very—

That seems like a real funny, smart pairing that they decided to put the two of you together and see if you could figure out chemistry.

Yes. And it's a perfect odd couple dynamic where, you know, he, he kind of like mentored me in this program for high school credit. And, but I form a real, or not even high school credit, just kind of look to look good on his college application kind of thing for a few weekends when we were children. And I created a bond with him. I was in and out of foster, foster care forever. So then he gets a call. He has a biological brother. He gets a call from the hospital. Hey, your brother's, your brother got in a horrible car accident. He's in the, he's in the ICU. You should come see him. And he's like, oh my God. And he's thinking, my older brother, my biological brother's— because we haven't seen each other since, you know, he was in high school. I was 10. 30 years pass and he comes to the hospital, his wife. He opens the curtain and it's me bleeding all fucked up. And his wife is like, who the fuck is this? He's like, I have no idea. Then he flashes back and he's like, oh my God, that's my— that's my little brother from this, this charity thing.

And then, and then, and then I come to, and I'm so charming with the wife, she falls in love with me. And she's like, you got to stay at the house. The kids fall in love with me. His friends, his assistant, everybody, his coworkers, everybody's like, oh man, he's the best. And I'm just a la What About Bob kind of way. And, uh, and I just drive him completely insane, drive him to misery. It's just like Steve Martin and John Candy. Like John Candy's like, okay, who would hate this? This, you know, golden retriever of a man, this puppy dog. But, you know, his character has such a stick up his ass. And John just— he never got to play this kind of role either, you know. So he always, he always kind of plays the hapless himbo, the buff gym bro who's kind of like ditzy. Um, so it was really, really just like the perfect odd couple relationship. So I'm really excited to— for people to see the movie. And it's not a prank movie, it's scripted, you know. So it's— and Matt Spicer, the director, is brilliant. And it's really like, it has the heart and soul of the movies, the comedies we grew up with that like we would quote them all summer in the '80s and '90s.

It has like the old school heart, but like new school. Me and Cena kept calling it hearts and farts. We would have like the craziest, most outrageous, shocking set piece joke, but tons of heart in the movie. So I'm really, really proud of what, what we, what we did together.

Last week of June is the debut on Netflix. Happy for all of your success. Thank you for being so open here.

This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.