Eric André is here to make you uncomfortable. But part of that job is making himself uncomfortable in the process. Here's what happened when he went up against California cops, car windows, and the smartest people in the world.
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00:00Eric Andre is here to make you uncomfortable, but part of that job is making himself uncomfortable
00:09in the process.
00:10Here's what happened when he went up against California cops, car windows, and the smartest
00:14people in the world.
00:15One of the earliest pranks featured on The Eric Andre Show was also among the most potentially
00:21dangerous.
00:22The star found a gathering of Mensa, the international organization for extremely intelligent people,
00:28and tried to enter the convention while wearing an elaborate suit of armor.
00:31Pop rocks.
00:32Are they science or voodoo?
00:34Why does my peepee come out yellow?
00:36Um.
00:37Hey, hey, hey, be nice.
00:39Mensa members roughly manhandled Andre to the point where he agreed to quit filming
00:43and leave the convention center before security guards arrived.
00:46Okay, we're done, we're done, we're done.
00:50One more question.
00:51Andre characterized it as one of the show's better moments, telling HuffPost,
00:55All the bits where I thought I was definitely going to get assaulted, I didn't.
00:59I got beat up at a Mensa convention.
01:02That was kind of cool.
01:03In the second season of The Eric Andre Show, the star barely avoided substantial legal
01:07trouble for invading a town hall meeting in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
01:11Hey guys, vote for me for class president and I'll put beer in the water fountains and
01:17cameras in the girls' locker rooms.
01:20Andre told Interview magazine,
01:22There were 20 sheriffs there and they were like, what the f----- are you doing?
01:26After his brief appearance, the authorities removed him from the premises.
01:30Don't tase me, bro.
01:34While in booking, Andre gave the name John Coltrane.
01:37Ultimately, they placed him in the local lockup for the night, and Andre later told the fader
01:41that he had to get a lawyer to fight the charges, all for a 30-second bit.
01:46By season 5, the series was probably best known for its star obliterating the set in
01:51each episode's opening moments.
01:53That earned the production some notoriety, so Andre was able to reach out and ask for
01:57the help of increasingly well-known celebrity guests.
02:00Hey John.
02:01Oh, hey Eric.
02:02What's up, man?
02:03That included wrestler John Cena, who was enlisted to pick up Andre and toss him through
02:07a shelf.
02:08Almost every precaution had been taken to protect Andre while he was being tossed, but
02:12it didn't all go as planned.
02:14Andre later told People magazine,
02:16I got through the shelf okay, but we forgot to sandbag the frame of the shelf, so the
02:21metal frame tipped over and knocked me in the head.
02:24Sensing something was very wrong, Andre went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a concussion.
02:29A CAT scan revealed no extensive or lasting damage to Andre's brain, while the show had
02:34to pause taping for half of a day.
02:36My brain is bruised.
02:37I hurt myself every year.
02:38It sucks.
02:39It has to end.
02:40It wasn't the only time Andre suffered for the opening sequence.
02:43As he told Spin,
02:44I don't remember when or how it happened, but I just went home and it looked like someone
02:49had held a cigarette against my butt cheek and just kept going until it melted deep,
02:54deep into the cheek.
02:55While shooting season one, Andre also exacerbated an injury he sustained in high school, when
03:00he tried to lift sidekick Hannibal Buress, along with his co-host's chair.
03:04I have two bulging discs in my spine from working out at the gym completely wrong from
03:08when I was like 16 years old until I was 20, so my back is all f----- up.
03:13And I tried to, like, run up to Hannibal's chair.
03:16It was way heavier than I anticipated, and I tore my back in half.
03:20Andre recalled crawling off the set for a 20-minute taping break to recover.
03:24Early in the production of season one, Andre was already suffering for his art, enduring
03:29a lingering injury from the result of a low-key prank where he jumped out of a trash can to
03:33surprise people.
03:34It took the better part of the day to film, and there was a lot of waiting for people
03:38to walk by.
03:40Congratulations!
03:43Squatting in that confined space was exceptionally taxing on his body.
03:46As he told Spin,
03:47I'm in physical therapy for it.
03:49My knees are both out of the track.
03:52Sometimes Andre's pranks have resulted in the need for emergency medical attention.
03:56While out in the streets of Brooklyn filming for season four, Andre smashed a car window
04:00with his bare hand.
04:01How much does it fix this window?
04:02How much does it fix this back window?
04:07He told People,
04:08In the bit, I was supposed to, like, hail through a car window.
04:11I was trying to hammer the window, but my whole hand went through.
04:14It sliced me up and I had to get stitches.
04:17I had to go to the hospital for that.
04:19My fingers are in weird silver-finger casts for a lot of the street stuff.
04:23Because the accident occurred so early, Andre had to record later sketches while concealing
04:27and trying to avoid re-injuring his hand.
04:30Hey, I'm a car too, you know.
04:36When The Eric Andre Show entered production in the early 2010s, it was just as chaotic
04:40behind the scenes as it appeared on camera.
04:43As he told Exclaim,
04:44Towards the beginning, I didn't know what I was doing.
04:47I didn't know how to do stunts properly.
04:49I didn't know you could wear pads or jump into pads.
04:52I was just wiping out on concrete and destroying my body.
04:56He had what he believes to be his worst injury of the entire series while taping a season
05:002 interview with Vivica A. Fox.
05:05He told Den of Geek,
05:07I jumped on the desk and landed on my tailbone on the ground, which was solid concrete evidently.
05:12I landed in this way that had this domino ripple effect up my spine so my body was asymmetrical
05:17for the rest of the year.
05:18I was walking around all weird.
05:20Are you okay?
05:21We got it.
05:22That thing is not sturdy.
05:23Can I go help him up?
05:25Andre's trip to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio yielded so much
05:30material that it became the basis for two special extra episodes of his show.
05:34As Andre told Interview magazine,
05:36We went out and it was intense, man.
05:39It was scary.
05:40It was an open-carry state.
05:42People really hated me, like old-school white supremacist hatred.
05:45I mean, you seem like you're upset.
05:47I want you to have sex with my wife.
05:49Authorities removed Andre from the stage after he engaged with far-right conspiracy theorist
05:54Alex Jones, who seemed to think he was with The Daily Show.
05:57Why does my peepee come out yellow?
05:59There isn't really a theme to each season of The Eric Andre Show, but viewers can tell
06:03when an episode was produced by a quick glance at the show's host.
06:07Before each season, Andre submits to some kind of physical transformation, usually for
06:12comedic value.
06:13He told Den of Geek,
06:14I was going to shave male-pattern baldness into my dreadlocks, but that's hard to do
06:19while still making it look real, and the whole point when I'm in people's faces or in the
06:22street is that this looks real and not like a costume.
06:26So I just didn't brush my hair the whole year.
06:28I didn't cut my fingernails.
06:30I grew my fingernails as long as possible, like Howard Hughes.
06:34For other seasons, he stayed indoors and didn't expose himself to sunlight to look sickly
06:38and pale, or he shaved his head.
06:41He also tried to lose an unhealthy amount of weight, but it didn't go as planned.
06:45According to Andre,
06:46I was trying to lose 30 pounds, but I was just so hungry and miserable that it became
06:50too difficult to write comedy.
06:52So I gave up on that and only lost about 7 pounds, but even that was a lot.
06:56So this year, he was going to gain weight.
06:59He's as f----- good.
07:00Ha ha ha!
07:01Shave his head.
07:02It's very, like, Holy Mountain-like.
07:04One of the guests on a 2023 episode was rapper, actor, and troubled son of Tom Hanks, Chet.
07:10Andre singled out Hanks as the most problematic and challenging guest of his show's sixth
07:14season, telling Rolling Stone,
07:16He broke our crew.
07:18The Eric Andre Show is usually set up to fool and baffle its celebrity guests, but Andre
07:23thinks that Hanks tried to get the jump on the production, explaining,
07:26He tried to prank us back.
07:28He stole a motorcycle and rode it around.
07:30He almost knocked a bunch of grips and gaffers off their ladders.
07:34It was very dangerous.
07:35Ha ha ha!
07:37Bah!
07:38What is going on with you?
07:41Andre said that the show removed all the offending footage, but the episode still contained some
07:45sequences of Hanks ripping down a curtain, stalking around with a gun, and scat singing.
07:51Andre concluded,
07:52He is emotionally disturbed.