Eric André Took a Whole Lot of Whippets During This Interview
I’m starting to get a bit worried for Eric André’s health. We’re huddled together at a bar in Austin, Texas, during SXSW, where the gonzo comedian typically holds court, and he’s sucked in about a half-dozen whippets thus far, laughing maniacally and locking eyes with me each time his big, blue balloon fills with nitrous oxide. It feels like a test of my equanimity; like I’m one of the guests on his hilariously demented Adult Swim series The Eric André Show that he delights in startling.
“It’s just for my headache,” he says with a grin.
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André says he started doing whippets in his early thirties to reduce his anxiety. Weed makes him paranoid, and he’s not “a depressive” in need of cocaine or Adderall, so he’s resorted to good old-fashioned nitrous to help center himself.
“I’m anxious, so the only drugs that reduce my anxiety are benzos, alcohol, and nitrous oxide. But benzos are incredibly dangerous, and alcohol is incredibly corrosive, so this is actually the safest thing to deal with my anxiety,” he reasons. “Dentists give this to children.”
But he’s also relishing how uncomfortable it’s making everyone around him. The blaring sound that big, blue balloon makes when it gets nitrous’d causes the entire bar to shoot him a glance. At one point, a manager in a dark suit with a septum piercing comes by to check on us because he thought the noise was “a keg being tapped.”
We’re here in Austin to discuss the sixth season of The Eric André Show, which will premiere on June 4. SXSW audiences were given a special sneak preview of what’s in store, including an interview with Lil Nas X that’s destined to go viral.
“It’s the only show where I can be completely free,” says André. “Adult Swim is so hands-off. They’ve taken this Montessori approach to my upbringing. I can do whatever I want. It’s the best job in the world.”
André also became an unlikely tabloid fixture recently due to his brief relationship with the model and author Emily Ratajkowski — one that somehow inspired a think piece in The Guardian titled, “What straight men need to learn from Eric André and Emily Ratajkowski.” (Hint: Women like funny men. Yes, that’s the entire gist of it. Truly groundbreaking stuff.)
Over the course of his chat with Rolling Stone, André discussed the upcoming season of his anarchic talk show, Jehovah’s Witnesses, how he got in such good shape (it wasn’t Ozempic), and that nude Valentine’s Day Instagram post that temporarily broke the internet.
That Daymond John interview in Season Six was a wild ride.
We wanted to air the entire raw footage. Most interviews are an hour and a half, and we whittle them down, but with Daymond John we were like, “I wish we could air the entire thing.” He would love it sometimes, hate it, want to kill himself. There was a simulated blow job that we cut that he was not thrilled about.
When you started eating the Invisible Man’s ass he seemed very turned off.
[Laughs.] He didn’t like that! His pride came into play.
So, the show started in 2012 and it’s been 11 years. That’s a good run. Is this possibly the final season of the show?
[Points to balloon.] I’ve tried everything, and this is the only thing that cures my hangover. Not out of lack of love for the show. I would keep it going! I’d like to do the same amount of work and make five times the amount of money. But I don’t know! I leave it in God’s hands. I leave it in most Jehovah’s Witnesses’ hands — Donald Glover, Prince, Michael Jackson, the Wayans Brothers’ family. You know in Jehovah’s Witness-ess-ess-ess-ess’ only 144,000 people can get into heaven? And you have to wait until someone leaves Jehovah’s Witness heaven to be able to enter.
Does Michael Jackson get in?
I don’t know! Prince and MJ might not even be in there, because it’s full. You have to wait for someone to leave.
Prince is probably good. For MJ, they might need to hold a tribunal or something.
[Laughs.] Yeah, maybe.
Going into the sixth season of The Eric André Show, do you feel like you’re almost competing with yourself as far as how wild to take things?
Steve Martin, in his autobiography, said something like, “Comedy is the distortion of truth.” I realized the hard way that the more violent a prank is doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better. It’s the premise of the prank that makes it funny. My issue with the show is that I wish more women watched it. The demographic is like 90 percent men. I wish there was more of a gender balance, and I think to achieve a gender balance I’d have to do a show that’s narrative and has relationships between characters. This show is so nonlinear and gross-out. That’s the only existential crisis I’m having about the show.
What celebrity guests can we expect this season on The Eric André Show?
Meagan Good, Blac Chyna, Lil Yachty, Daymond John, Lil Nas X, Denzel Curry, Cypress Hill, Karrueche Tran, Jaleel White, Felipe Esparza, Jon Hamm, Natasha Lyonne, Drew Barrymore, Kumail Nanjiani … Ice Spice, SZA, Bill Murray, Donald Glover, Donald Rumsfeld, Jussie Smollett, Steve Rannazzisi, Casey Anthony, Maya Angelou …
Was there anyone you went for that you were bummed you didn’t get?
Papa John!
The sweaty pizza eater.
Just too cool. There will be a day of reckoning. He’s gonna eat 30 pizzas in 30 days, and the day of reckoning will come.
The Lil Nas X interview is a lot of fun. What was that like to shoot?
It was great because he’s very sensitive, so he was easily affected by every prank we threw at him. He’s kind of the ideal guest. He was very happy on the way out because he said something to us like, “This is my Oscar. It’s more important that I did this show in my life than win a Grammy or any award. This is a seminal moment in my life.” But we ruined his outfit. We dropped this ice cream — it’s not clay — from the sky onto the desk and didn’t know it was going to drench him. It was very tense. Chet Hanks, on the other hand, was a tough cookie. He broke our crew. It felt like Rust. He broke us down.
What happened?
He is … emotionally disturbed. He stole a motorcycle and rode it around. He almost knocked a bunch of grips and gaffers off their ladders. It was very dangerous. He tried to prank us back, but we edited out all his bullshit! He’s not well. How did Colin Hanks come out so good and Chet Hanks come out so bad?
I saw the Ziwe interview with him, which was pretty bizarre.
He was trying to sleep with Ziwe. I talked to Ziwe about it. God, what a guy. Now he’s the executive producer on the show and the president of Adult Swim. [Laughs.]
How did you pull off shooting a ping-pong ball from your crotch at Lil Nas X’s head?
I shot a ping-pong ball out of my pussy hole. I spent a lot of time in Bangkok trying to perfect it.
How many desks have you destroyed at this point?
We average 27 per season.
You got in great shape this season, by the way.
I lost 40 pounds between seasons. You want to see the before-and-after pictures? [Shows me a bunch of shirtless photos of himself on his phone.]
Ozempic?
No Ozempic! But I considered peptides, which is the land between supplements and steroids, but I was too scared. Ozempic just makes you skinny, but Ozempic fucks you up, man. That shit is gnarly. Steroids I would do. Look, if Marvel was knocking down my door … which they never will. I could be the Black Jewish answer to Kumail Nanjiani.
What’s the gnarliest injury you’ve sustained from The Eric André Show?
John Cena threw me through a shelf that came down on me, and I got a concussion and had to get a CAT scan. I destroyed my back during the Vivica Fox interview. I was walking around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame for, like, a six-month period. I totally messed up my spine. Pills and stretching fixed it.
Were there any close calls this season when you were in the wild pranking?
The very first prank we shot in New York/New Jersey we had more New Jersey cops called on us than [at any point in] the entire history of the show. We informed the police department and worked with them beforehand, but this department was so unorganized and corrupt that I almost got shot. It was a bit where I was beating the shit out of a fake cop that looked real. Well, maybe not beating the shit out of him, but he was passed out and I was shoving donuts in his mouth. They almost shut down the whole production. It was the very first prank we were shooting, and we had to shoot 40 more pranks. The cop called it in and said, “Man down,” and that apparently overrides everything. More emergency vehicles got called on us this season than any other season. We typically shoot the studio stuff in L.A. and the field stuff in New York or New Jersey. We go to Newark sometimes.
Michael B. Jordan’s from Newark.
Really? He’s jacked. You know, he saw my penis by accident. While I was shooting Bad Trip I was in Atlanta, I was very stressed, and I went to the Four Seasons’ spa. I was in the men’s section of the spa and had the entire spa to myself all day to the point where I was feeling so comfortable that I was reading a newspaper butt-naked and spread eagle in the sauna. No one came in for hours. Out of nowhere, Michael B. Jordan entered the sauna, stared into the center of my penis hole, looks me in the eye, and just leaves. It’s the only time I’ve ever met him.
Wow. Has Adult Swim ever intervened and been like, “Sorry, this prank is too much.”
They’ll only intervene if they’re like, “No, you can’t do that because it’s illegal.” I wanted to drive my car into a marching band in the middle of a parade and they were like, “No, there might be fatalities.”
What happened to Hannibal Buress?
Felipe [Esparza] was co-host with Hannibal in Seasons Four and Five, and then Hannibal quit, so it was like when the vice president dies, the secretary of state becomes vice president. Hannibal had had enough. It was 10 years of the show, and he wanted to spread his wings and fly. I think he got what he wanted creatively out of it and just moved on. I miss him dearly, but it’s been fine. The door’s always open for him to come back whenever he wants, but I think he’d had enough. And rightfully so. He’s seen me try to take a shit on my desk more times than he can count, so I don’t blame him.
Your recent relationship with Emily Ratajkowski made a lot of headlines.
I don’t kiss and tell, bro! [Takes a whippet.] It did make headlines.
How did you feel about the way the media covered it?
I think the think pieces and the mythology are more interesting than the reality.
It struck me as odd because you’re a good-looking dude and a successful comedian, and there were all these think pieces that ran with headlines like, “How Could This Happen?!”
[Laughs.] How could this happen! No, man. I’m ugly. I looked like Steve Urkel for the first 20 years of my life. I think that people think attraction is only based on physical appearance, but beauty is only skin-deep. Colin [Jost] is married to Scarlett Johansson, and [John] Mulaney is married to Olivia Munn, so you’d think comedy … works.
Tell me about that Valentine’s Day Instagram post with you and Emily Ratajkowski. What were you going for there?
Emily popped up and took that picture. I was really in the moment: I was drinking wine, she started dying laughing, and she was like, “I have to take a picture of this.” She took the picture, we both started cracking up, and she was like, “This is iconic” — she kept saying “iconic.” We both agreed this was a beautiful image that we had to share with the world.
This was your Titanic “draw me like one of your French girls” moment.
[Laughs.] It really was! And there wasn’t much thought behind it. It was one of those things. And I think that’s what art is about. Art is not intellectual; it’s primal. It has to speak to your hormones as much as it speaks to your mind. The beauty of that was the spontaneity. Spontaneity and capturing happy accidents are what art is all about.
When we last spoke a few years ago, you were dating someone who wasn’t in the business and didn’t even know who you were.
I don’t think I’ve ever dated a woman who knew who the fuck I was before.
It must have been pretty wild then to be with someone very famous and get chased by the paparazzi and all that.
I think that’s a disturbing thing, man. Paparazzi killed Princess Diana. It’s legalized stalking. There’s a darkness to it. It’s boundary-less and quasi-abusive, you know what I mean? She has the right to her privacy. If she goes outside her house they’re there. There should be some laws behind that. Yes, they can hide behind their First Amendment rights, but I don’t think that’s what the forefathers intended. I don’t give a fuck; I have nothing to hide. But it’s more about how I feel concerned for her safety and the safety of others at her level who deal with that. She has a kid. It’s not safe. And it’s hard to complain about it because most people are like, “Fuck you, it must be nice!” But there’s a darkness to it. She’s handled it with grace.
I enjoyed the bit this season with Denzel Curry where you’re shoveling curry in his mouth while he’s getting dental work done while rapping.
[Laughs.] What more can you ask for? He loved it. He was a superfan of the show, so he was like, “You can do whatever you want.” He was like Nas X. This younger generation of zoomer rappers were coming of age when the show started, so they grew up with this show. This new wave of celebs and rappers are so invested in the show in a way that I never expected. I feel honored. I feel like, “Oh, shit, maybe I put a little dent in the zeitgeist.” A little stain on the cultural map!
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