The King of Bonkers Comedy
Eric Andre has been torturing celebs for more than a decade
UPDATE: A version of this story appeared Nov. 28, 2022, on the news site of Questionist’s parent company, Geeks Who Drink. But the season has happened now, and we’ve all we’ve all been through a lot of other stuff, I’m sure. Let’s read it again!
This summer, Adult Swim aired the sixth season of The Eric Andre Show. “Expect more deranged pranks, fire, and chaos in Season 666,” Andre said in a statement when the season was announced in 2022, “with a jam-packed schedule of celebrities I can’t believe agreed to this.”
Deranged pranks and chaos is an ultra-tame way of describing the show, which has somehow been on television for the past decade. For the uninitiated, it’s supposed to be like the lowest of low-budget talk shows, but the fact that there’s a host and a desk are where those similarities stop. (Especially since the host — Andre himself — usually trashes the entire set at some point during the show’s 11-ish minute run-time.)
The season wound up featuring such megastars as Lil Nas X, Jon Hamm, and Donald Glover, and Andre may not be kidding when he says that he’s surprised that celebs — even the D-listers — actually show up for filming He does everything he can to make them uncomfortable from the jump, and to call the interviews absolutely f-ing bonkers still manages to be an understatement. The show’s set is deliberately hot. Andre occasionally hides rotten seafood under the guests’ seats, and there’s usually a member of the crew doing something unspeakable just off-camera. And that’s before he starts asking the questions.
“We got it down to a science where we can kind of make it work with anybody,” Andre told The Guardian in 2020. “When tarantulas and scorpions are popping out of my desk, it doesn’t matter who they are, they’re going to have a strong reaction. We don’t tell the guests a single thing before they come to set, and they waltz right into a house of horrors.”
That “house of horrors” has included “cheeseboarding” singer Grimes with a bowl of liquid cheddar during a segment called “Grimes and Punishment”; hopefully pretending to drink a jar of human excrement in front of Judy Greer; and just being so all-around-annoying that TI walked off the set.
But the best-slash-worst example of what Andre is capable of came during an interview with former reality show star Lauren Conrad. After two of the most excruciating minutes you’ve experienced outside of your senior prom, Andre threw up on his desk, and then tried to eat it. A visibly gagging Conrad mumbled “Nope,” and ran backstage.
“After, I gave her a bottle of wine and was like, ‘Oh, you know I’m just f—king around. It’s all love,’” Andre told Maxim. “And then she just stormed out. Her publicist was so f—ing p—ed, screaming at us, ‘You’ll never work in this town again! I’m going to ban you guys, blah, blah, blah!’”
That clearly never happened, and the rest of us are…well, we’re not going to say better because of it, but definitely more entertained. And frightened. And a tiny bit queasy. And frightened again.