SAM SANDERS, HOST:
I guess full disclosure, Eric, I got to say, when this was first pitched and the potential for a conversation about "Bad Trip" was pitched to the show, one of my colleagues, she sent me this clip of you and Larry King in an interview...
ERIC ANDRE: Oh, yeah.
SANDERS: ...From years ago that scared the crap out of me...
ANDRE: R.I.P.
SANDERS: ...'Cause you gave that man hell.
ANDRE: Hell on earth - I put him through the ringer.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)
LARRY KING: Do you have a secret talent?
ANDRE: Yes.
KING: What is that?
ANDRE: I can sixty-nine with Larry King...
SANDERS: And when they sent me that, I was like, I can't talk to this man.
ANDRE: (Laughter).
SANDERS: He's going to annihilate me. He's going to destroy me. Like, do you remember that interview?
ANDRE: Yeah. No, I remember it very well. And it's one of my favorite interviews outside of the interviews from my show.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)
KING: What do you think of this election?
ANDRE: I think it's sassy.
KING: Sassy?
ANDRE: Yeah.
KING: What makes you angry?
ANDRE: Larry King (laughter).
KING: I love when you book the intellectuals. Oh...
ANDRE: He was asking me ridiculous questions at that point. He wasn't listening.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)
KING: Would you - you want me to be a guest on your show?
ANDRE: (Laughter) I do. I thought we already established that.
KING: What's the best...
ANDRE: I'm trying to have a connection with you, and you're just glued...
SANDERS: You love to, like, occupy the awkward space.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: You just - you seem really comfortable there. Like, Larry King is squirming. He is angry. And you're just like...
ANDRE: I'm not always totally comfortable there, but I know it's good television because it's interesting.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ANDRE: It's provocative. It forces an emotion out of the viewer.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. And this episode, I swallow my fear and interview the ever-provocative comedian Eric Andre. You may have seen a lot of Eric recently. He is out with this new prank film called "Bad Trip." It has hit No. 1 on Netflix a few times since it was released at the end of March this year.
This movie, "Bad Trip," it is a buddy road trip film meets rom-com meets hidden camera prank show. So in the movie, Eric Andre stars alongside fellow comedians Lil Rel Howery and Tiffany Haddish. Their characters are fictional, telling this fictional story. But all along the way, they're playing these pranks on real people.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Help me. The cops won't get here in time.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (As self) What the hell you do to her? You better scale your ass back up that wall.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (As self) That nigga ain't worth it. Ay, I'm from where you from.
TIFFANY HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) No, you ain't from where I'm from.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (As self) I'm from where you from. (Unintelligible) I'll be beating his ass. It ain't worth it, baby.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (As self) If you was from the street, you wouldn't be doing that.
SANDERS: "Bad Trip" is not Eric Andre's first time doing pranks. Since 2012, he has hosted "The Eric Andre Show." The fifth season of that show premiered on Adult Swim last year. That show, "The Eric Andre Show," it is this weird sendup of the late-night talk show format - also very funny, also very absurd and full of pranks.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE ERIC ANDRE SHOW")
TIFFANY POLLARD: Ow - oh, see, I don't like [expletive] like that.
ANDRE: Nah, there's dead birds.
POLLARD: Please don't start [expletive] with me.
ANDRE: No, birds.
POLLARD: What else is coming down?
LAKEITH STANFIELD: It's just raining dead birds. That's all.
ANDRE: It's just dead birds.
POLLARD: Oh, God. Please...
SANDERS: In this chat, we talk all things prank with Eric Andre and why, unlike a lot of other prank TV and movies, his stuff sometimes ends up having a heart. We also discuss how pranking while Black can complicate things.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Let's talk about "Bad Trip."
ANDRE: OK.
SANDERS: For folks that haven't seen it, give them a quick plot synopsis.
ANDRE: It's a hidden camera prank movie, but there's a narrative. There's a story within the hidden camera prank that's basically a love story. It's a buddy road trip comedy, a la "Dumb and Dumber."
SANDERS: Yeah.
ANDRE: "Borat" meets "Dumb And Dumber" - there we go.
SANDERS: But Black.
ANDRE: But Black. Black "Borat" - Blorat (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
ANDRE: Yes, Blorat.
SANDERS: I don't want to give away too much, but I do want you, if you're willing to do this...
ANDRE: It's out. The movie's out already. Give it away.
SANDERS: It is out. But there are some people who haven't seen it. Are you like - I'm...
ANDRE: Give it away (laughter).
SANDERS: All right. OK. Give it away. Give it away. Give it away. Spoiler alert, everyone - at the end, they all die.
ANDRE: (Laughter) R.I.P.
SANDERS: (Laughter) Break down one of the plots and, like, how you make it work. Seeing these pranks happen, my question the whole time was just like, how does he pull this off? Like, some people have to know; some people can't know. But the cameras are there.
ANDRE: Nobody knows except the actors - except for me, Michaela, Tiffany Haddish and Rel. People - we never had a fake reaction. Our ethos going into it was like, can never have a fake reaction. Even if you just need a line of exposition out of somebody that you're pranking, it has to be authentic. So for instance, there's a scene where I break out into musical. I realize I'm in love with Maria, the love interest in the movie. And I'm talking to this older gentleman on a bench right outside of the mall. And I'm asking him - I'm having this existential debate on whether I should stay in New York and toil in these miserable, menial jobs or if I should chase love and go to New York. I talk to that guy probably for like 90 minutes before I got two sentences out of him that I needed to kick off the whole road trip, which was - I just needed him to say - I was like, what do you think? You think I should stay here and toil in obscurity, or do you think I should go and take a chance on love?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) And like, I've never felt this way about a woman before.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (As self) What do you have going here?
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) I don't got anything going here. That's the thing. I got - you know, my best friend is here, my friend Bud.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (As self) You know what I say? Go for it. If you don't, the rest of your life, you're going to be sitting here saying, what if I would have? What if I could have?
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Yeah, what am doing here?
The scene's probably two minutes long. I talked to that guy for almost two hours just to get that one little piece of information out of him because there's no fake reactions in the movie. We had to have everyone having a genuine reaction. So that was our ethos going into it. So that's a little bit of...
(CROSSTALK)
SANDERS: Are you recording the whole time?
ANDRE: We're recording the whole time on multiple cameras - on, like, 19 cameras. We have, like...
SANDERS: And this dude doesn't see the cameras?
ANDRE: No, they're all hidden. So they're either, like, camera operators hidden inside parked minivans with tinted windows or, like, special boxes and fake walls that we build into walls - into existing building structures. There's people with - we had coffee cup cameras. We have these little...
SANDERS: Stop it.
ANDRE: ...GoPro - I swear to God.
SANDERS: Stop it.
ANDRE: And we can send out - I should show pictures more on Instagram.
SANDERS: You should.
ANDRE: So yeah, there's no fake reactions throughout the movie.
SANDERS: Are you surprised that strangers will talk to you that long, especially when you're going into some weird, strange places?
ANDRE: I am. I am. But I had it down to a science where I kind of knew how to charm them enough to get them to talk to me, but also make them think I'm completely nuts. And a lot of them were, like, stuck there. Like, the Army recruitment guy who was stuck there doing his job, so he couldn't really leave. He was on his shift. So (laughter) he was kind of trapped.
SANDERS: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (As self) You just got to get it together, man. Talk to your buddy, apologize to him, and you'll be fine. Just tell him how you feel. Just tell him you're sorry.
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Yeah, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (As self) And if he's really your friend - if you guys have been friends for as long as you have, he's going to forgive you.
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Yeah. God...
SANDERS: Were there any pranks that you couldn't use?
ANDRE: Yeah, we shot a - I mean, we released some. We did a prank with Chris Rock, and the person we were pranking recognized Chris right away, obviously, because he's very, very, very famous.
SANDERS: Which you had to have expected, yeah.
ANDRE: Yeah, we were hoping - we had him in semi-disguise, but his voice is so iconic and recognizable. So that was the biggest heartbreak 'cause he just - like, he did the movie for no money. He flew himself out. He just did it as a fan. And to have to cut one of my heroes from the movie was very heartbreaking.
We also did this - and you can see - you could see - we just posted it online. We also did this prank where - and we stay at a - me and Rel - Rel and I stay at a haunted motel for the night. And we - I get possessed, you know, a la "The Exorcist," and we had this real preacher that we found, this real Georgian preacher come in...
SANDERS: Shut up. Oh, my God.
ANDRE: ...And, like, perform an exorcist on me - exorcism. We just released a bunch of deleted scenes, so you can see them on YouTube.
SANDERS: What is your demonic possession voice?
ANDRE: It's kind of like my "Eric Andre Show" voice (laughter).
SANDERS: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE ERIC ANDRE SHOW")
ANDRE: Welcome to the fifth season of "The Eric Andre Show."
(CHEERING)
ANDRE: Meet our new band.
Very Macho Man Randy Savage, like, (speaking gibberish, speaking Latin). It's like that kind of. It's kind of like how I do stand up.
SANDERS: I like that.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: OK. OK. What was the most dangerous thing that happened to you and Rel and the whole team during the taping of these pranks?
ANDRE: There's a scene where Rel - my character and Rel's character, our penises get stuck in a Chinese finger trap.
SANDERS: Even when you say - I've seen it twice. I've watched this movie twice. And when you say what the pranks are, it breaks me down all over again.
ANDRE: (Laughter).
SANDERS: I'm sorry. Go ahead.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: I just...
ANDRE: And we went into this kind of like hood barber shop in Atlanta. And...
SANDERS: Don't undersell it. First, so y'all have these, like, prosthetic penii (ph)...
ANDRE: Yeah, we - yes, exactly.
SANDERS: ...Connected through an oversized Chinese finger trap.
ANDRE: Yes. And we're stretching it back and forth. And we're trying to get out of the penis trap. We're trapped in the thing. So we ask this barber politely to use his scissors to cut us out of this trap. And the guy did not think it was funny.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Hey, sir. Can you get our [expletive] out of this thing?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (As self) No, man. I promise you - I promise you...
(CROSSTALK)
ANDRE: (As Chris Carey) Hey, hey. You know where...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (As self) Get the [expletive] up out of here.
LIL REL HOWERY: (As Bud Malone) He's got a knife.
ANDRE: He chased us out of the - his barbershop with a knife. And he told us later - he was like, he said, you're lucky I didn't bring my gun to work; I usually bring my gun. And that was Rel's first day of shooting, so Rel quit the movie for, like, 24 hours. We didn't have Rel...
SANDERS: Nice.
ANDRE: ...Because we almost murdered him (laughter).
SANDERS: Yeah. And also, Rel didn't just quit. Rel called up his friend Tiffany Haddish to be like...
ANDRE: He called Tiffany...
SANDERS: ...What the hell?
ANDRE: He called Tiffany to vent, and Tiffany started laughing at him. He's like Eric Andre's got me doing this prank movie. He almost got killed. And she thought it was so funny that she called me after she got off the phone with Rel. And she was like, yo, you almost got Rel killed? And I was like, yeah, don't tell anybody. I was embarrassed. And she goes, nah, like, I live for that [expletive]. Get me in that.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ANDRE: Like, I love doing - like, she'd done some prank shows on MTV and Comedy Central. She's like, sign me up. I'll do any of that. Like, I live for that stuff. And coincidentally, the woman that was supposed to play Rel's sister had just dropped out because she had a scheduling conflict with her television show. So it was pennies from heaven. I mean, like, it was a casting from heaven because, obviously, Tiffany's just brilliant.
SANDERS: She's so good.
ANDRE: So that added so much value to the movie, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Coming up, how do you make a hidden camera prank movie while Black? It's complicated.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: So talking about these pranks where knives are pulled, et cetera, did you have to have any extra safety precautions around the potential for those things? Because you - y'all aren't Johnny Knoxville. Y'all are Black people out in the world doing that stuff.
ANDRE: (Laughter) We - after the knife incident, we beefed up our security. We did have a security guard during that, but we leveled it up a lot after that...
SANDERS: OK.
ANDRE: ...Because that was a nightmare. So...
SANDERS: Yeah.
ANDRE: ...Yeah. And my safe word was popcorn, but I kept forgetting my safe word in those violent moments.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ANDRE: I kept saying goose bumps for some reason. My mind just rerecorded goose bumps over popcorn. So I'd be yelling at security, goose bumps, goose bumps, goose bumps. And they'd be like, huh? And I'd go [expletive] popcorn.
SANDERS: (Laughter) Dude. Do you think it was riskier doing the pranks that you're doing with a team of people of color as opposed to, like, literally Johnny Knoxville and the white folks doing it?
ANDRE: Yeah. It can be. I mean - you know, it's funny. I even talked to Knoxville about this. Knoxville had a prank that he did back in the day in "Jackass" where he was in an orange prison jumpsuit with handcuffs and legcuffs, and he went into a hardware store. And he was like, can you saw these handcuffs off me? What do you got? And cops came and, like, almost arrested him. And I was just like thinking like, yeah, if me and Rel did that [expletive], we'd be dead. (Unintelligible, laughter).
SANDERS: You'd be dead. They would shoot you on sight. They would shoot you on sight.
ANDRE: Shoot me on sight.
So there was things like that where it was like - I mean, we had Tiffany in an orange jumpsuit. But you know what? That was a very contained - like, except for the graffiti removal guy, we locked down the street for her own safety.
SANDERS: Oh, really?
ANDRE: So we weren't letting, like pedestrians on that street. We like, kind of trapped that, unbeknownst to him.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (As self) Better take your ass off. You better take off. You better [expletive]. You better run.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Man, I'm going to get my car, and I'm going to go to Mexico. And I'm going to just start all over, man.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (As self) Get those clothes off, and get the [expletive] out of here.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Can I borrow your vest?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (As self) I can't give you my vest.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) You my lookout. I never forget a face.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (As self) Go.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Thank you for helping me escape.
ANDRE: Hidden camera means hidden...
SANDERS: That poor guy.
ANDRE: Hidden camera means hidden crew, so we kind of, like, isolated that guy without his knowledge so that Tiffany would be safe in the orange jumpsuit.
SANDERS: I love that guy.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: He was a frickin' good sport.
ANDRE: Oh, my God. He's amazing.
SANDERS: On top of, like, the team doing these pranks being Black and brown, I noticed a lot of the, like, civilians and bystanders involved and on the sidelines and wrapped up in these pranks, they're also people of color.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: Was that intentional?
ANDRE: Not directly intentional. A lot of - we filmed the majority of the movie in Atlanta, you know, and around Georgia.
SANDERS: Well, that explains a lot.
ANDRE: So there's just a lot of Black people in Atlanta. But also, it's a Black cast in compromised situations - our characters are always in compromised situations, and it was just nice seeing Black people help Black people out. It was like the...
SANDERS: Yeah.
ANDRE: ...People we were pranking were, like, even more invested because me and Rel are in peril in so many situations. And also, like, Black people have better reactions. Like, Black people are so emphatic. And like, a lot of people in the movie, like, wear their heart on their sleeve in the way, like, they don't hide their feelings. Like, some like...
SANDERS: No.
ANDRE: Like, if you prank, like, a white businessman, they just kind of like, well, that's weird. I'm just going to walk away. You know what I mean? Versus the women...
SANDERS: Whereas the Black woman starts praying for you...
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: ...Literally.
ANDRE: Or the woman in the chicken wing shop, J.R. Crickets, that's like...
SANDERS: Love her.
ANDRE: ...When Tiffany comes in...
SANDERS: The short-haired woman?
ANDRE: Yeah, yeah. Jackie (ph) was her name.
SANDERS: She's amazing.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BAD TRIP")
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Hey, did you see these dudes? Did they come up in here 'cause you know they love chicken.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (As self) Oh, girl, you just missed them.
JACKIE: (As self) You just missed them.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Them [expletive] was here?
JACKIE: (As self) I was about to call you.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) Did anybody here see where these [expletive] went?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (As self) They went that way. They got in the car and went that way.
HADDISH: (As Trina Malone) I'm gonna [expletive] these niggas up.
JACKIE: (As self) Go get them, girl.
(CROSSTALK)
SANDERS: Yeah, I love Jackie.
ANDRE: And she's like, I was just about to call you, girl, when Tiffany came back.
(LAUGHTER)
ANDRE: She's like, I went to school with the police. I'm in security. I don't forget a face.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ANDRE: But she's just so charismatic. Like, if she was a stuffy white businessman who's, like - works for a hedge fund, I don't think we would have gotten that same reaction we got there (laughter).
SANDERS: Yeah, yeah. And, like, there's also - when you're getting those kind of reactions from people of color, it's also revealing something that I never saw a lot of in "Punk'd" or "Jackass" or even "Borat." And lots of reviewers have spoken about this in the film "Bad Trip." There's a certain humanity that's revealed...
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: ...In these people that are being pranked.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: They are usually nice. They're usually kind. And they're trying to help, in spite of them being totally discombobulated by the prank.
ANDRE: Totally. You know what? When we first showed the movie to Sacha Baron Cohen, he had the best, like, succinct, astute review. And he turned to me, and he goes, you know, my movies are about exposing the corruption and hypocrisy of, like, wealthy white oligarchs; he goes, your movie is about showing the humanity and the beauty and the good Samaritan nature of Black people and working-class people. And like, he goes, I really hope your movie, like, unites the working class because we're pitted against each other so often through class and race that your movie shows the humanity of the proletariat. And I was like, wow. Like, right at the end of the movie, like, that was the first thing out of his mouth.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: All right, coming up, when it comes to comedy and being offensive, where is Eric Andre's line?
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: So one of the pranks in the movie - someone beats up a blind person.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: Another prank in the movie...
ANDRE: I would just say, for your audience listening, that is a stuntman, by the way (laughter).
SANDERS: OK, OK, OK, yeah (laughter).
ANDRE: That wasn't a real blind person out in the streets. That is a stuntman.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Yes, yes, yes. But people...
ANDRE: That is a nonblind statement, yes. Just...
SANDERS: People in the wild are thinking that you're, like, beating up a blind man or some...
ANDRE: Yeah. Not me - Michaela, yes.
SANDERS: Yes, yes, yes. And then there's, like, the gorilla sex scene at the zoo.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: Is there a barometer for offensiveness when you're thinking about pranks and what will end up in the movie? Like, is there a line you will not cross? Or do you not think about it that way?
ANDRE: You know what? Thinking about a line to not cross or cross is like, you're always threading the needle when you're doing shock comedy. And I think shock comedy and being provocative and sometimes polarizing in your comedy is very important - not just in comedy, but in all art. But I think behind every creative comedic choice or any creative artistic choice of any artistic medium - fine art, literature, poetry, dance - I think it comes down to two things; it comes down to intent and context. I think it's very easy for anybody to recontextualize any scene from any movie or any work of art, any medium, and be offended by it, you know? Murder - like, the act of murder is horrible, right? You would say murdering somebody is very horrible.
SANDERS: I would say. I would say.
ANDRE: Yet when we're watching "John Wick" in the movie theaters and Keanu Reeves...
SANDERS: I'm like, kill them. Kill them all (laughter).
ANDRE: Yeah (laughter). Keanu Reeves is murdering a million stuntmen. At no point are you like, you know what? That's kind of messed up because Jeffrey Dahmer murdered some people, and you're not being sensitive to their plight. You wouldn't think that because you're looking at "John Wick" in a specific context. So there's context, and there's intent. There's never any malicious intent behind any of my - I can't speak for all comedians - but behind my creative comedic choices, there's never malicious intent. My only intent is to make the audience laugh and even make the people I'm pranking laugh eventually once the prank is revealed.
SANDERS: Yeah, yeah. OK, that makes sense.
ANDRE: So, and then the exact context is almost for the audience. It's the burden of the audience. I think you can recontextualize any scene from any movie, whether it's comedy or drama or any art form. But it's up to you to put the pieces together and kind of understand the context of any scene.
SANDERS: Yeah. So you do pranks on "The Eric Andre Show" as well. And whenever I read about that show and read about you talking about it, a word that is always tossed about is absurdist.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: And in this interview with IndieWire, I really love something you told them. You said that your goal with these pranks is not to be mean, but to instead warp people's reality to the point of psychosis.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: And I was like, whoa, huh. What do you mean by that?
ANDRE: What don't I mean by that, my friend, is the question.
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ANDRE: No, I think pranks - you have to thread the needle with pranks because it's very easy to do - to make a prank feel mean or mean-spirited. And I don't think there's any creative value in being mean or malicious. I don't think it's, like, watchable even or fun. You know, it should be a fun watch. So the way to keep pranks ethical and make them fun and enjoyable to watch is distorting reality to its - to the nth degree, which is the verge of psychosis.
SANDERS: (Laughter) When you get people to that state...
ANDRE: Yes?
SANDERS: ...What do you hope they bring back with them to the real world?
ANDRE: I hope they have a story to tell for the rest of their life.
SANDERS: That's nice.
ANDRE: Yeah.
SANDERS: Last question for you. I've heard a lot of folks - I've seen a lot of folks ask about who you most want to prank, but I'm wondering who you would never prank and why.
ANDRE: Oh, gosh. I don't know. That's a good question, too. Who would I never prank? Oh, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. That's - I got an answer.
We found out LeVar Burton wanted to do the show Season 5, and he did. So I was about to put him in the chair and prank him. And I looked at my director and my writing partner, and I go, I grew up on "Reading Rainbow" and "Star Trek" and "Roots." And LeVar Burton's work is so - like, he raised me. Like, those are such seminal - like, I watched "Star Trek" with my grandma. My mom made me watch "Roots" when I was 8 years old onwards. And when I was...
SANDERS: That's kind of young for "Roots," bro.
ANDRE: No, my mom was - (laughter) my mom's the white one, too. And she is more woke - my mom is more into Black rights than my dad. My dad is like - my dad's Black; my mom's white. My mom, when she was 18 years old, was at the March on Washington and saw Martin Luther King's...
SANDERS: OK.
ANDRE: ..."I Have A Dream" speech in 1963, when she was 18 years old.
SANDERS: All right. Come through, ally.
ANDRE: So my mom has been woke since Day 1.
But LeVar Burton was so part of my childhood that I like - I go - I turn my producing partners and I go, I don't have the heart to prank him. Like, I can't. I just - I can't do it. And I was, like, trying to write pranks for LeVar Burton. And I was like, I can't. It's like - I don't know what - it would be like pranking my grandmother or like pranking Santa Claus. Like, he's like almost mythical, like, in my heart. So I just - we had him on the show, and we had him do, like, wacky pranks with the other guests. But he was, like, in on it. Like, we didn't prank - we didn't sit him in the couch and prank him. So that's my answer - LeVar Burton.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: I'm really grateful to you for this time and this conversation.
ANDRE: Of course.
SANDERS: But I'm also thankful - I realized, thinking about this interview and this movie and my questions for you, I think what I like most about what "Bad Trip" does right now is it gives viewers just, like, hour and a half of just Black joy, Black absurdity and Black high jinks.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: ...In this moment when all the other news is Black pain and Black trauma and Black suffering.
ANDRE: Yes.
SANDERS: So I thank you for that.
ANDRE: Of course.
SANDERS: And it meant a lot to me.
ANDRE: Thank you. I appreciate that. That means a lot.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SANDERS: Thanks again to comedian Eric Andre. His latest movie, "Bad Trip," is out on Netflix now. I liked it so much I watched twice. That never happens. Also, all five seasons of "The Eric Andre Show" are streaming right now on Hulu. Speaking of video - dear listeners, if you want to watch me with a mic in my hand talking to Eric Andre, there's an extended version of this interview with Eric Andre on YouTube. Yes. It's at youtube.com/npr.
All right, listeners, this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by Andrea Gutierrez, and it was edited by Jordana Hochman. Listeners, take care of yourselves. Find something to laugh about. Till next time, stay safe. I'm Sam Sanders. We'll talk soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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