The Lesson Eric Andre Learned After the First Celebrity Stormed Off His Show

The sixth season of The Eric Andre Show premiered earlier this month on Adult Swim, which requires cable subscription to access. What’s wrong with Max that they don’t stream a show that’s more popular with people who don’t have cable? Is this some sort of David Zaslav write-off scheme? They take a beloved prank show and bury it on linear television, where only Chicago Fire Country Outlaw viewers can find it. Could this be one of the reasons why the television industry is suffering?

The point is, The Eric Andre Show is out, which means Eric Andre is promoting it, but only on podcasts because the late-night shows are on hiatus due to the writers’ strike. So, this story comes to you not from Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert but from Justin Long, the star of the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise and Ed. He also starred in arguably last year’s best horror film, Barbarian. In the podcast, Justin Long awkwardly asked Andre numerous questions about his show — Long’s awkward interviewing style seems to be part of his charm — or, ahem, his rizz.

While answering these awkwardly posed questions, Eric Andre revealed that the first celebrity who ever walked off The Eric Andre Show was Lauren Conrad, best known from The Hills. It’s important to note that Lauren Conrad is not the same person as Kristin Cavallari or Heidi Montag, who are other individuals from The Hills. Conrad walked off the show after Andre vomited and then proceeded to eat his own vomit. Although one might say, “Good call, Lauren!” it’s worth mentioning that she did not walk off earlier in the segment when Hannibal Burress was eating a head of lettuce while Andre drew a swastika on his head with lipstick.

The fact that Conrad did not walk off earlier is probably why her publicist attempted to kill the segment. More details on that will be discussed shortly.

An interesting coincidence was Jimmy Kimmel’s appearance on the show that same season. Kimmel appeared because his son was working as a production assistant on The Eric Andre Show, and Andre asked Kimmel’s son if he would ask his dad to be on the show. Kimmel agreed, and although Andre was “a fucker” to him, Kimmel took it in good stride.

The reason we’re mentioning this Kimmel appearance, which would not be otherwise noteworthy, is that after Lauren Conrad walked off the show, her publicist “rips me a new one. Rips Adult Swim a new one,” and dramatically threatened to get Andre fired in an email that resembled a “you’ll never work in this town again” scenario. The publicist even went as far as calling Andre antisemitic and part of the “Fourth Reich” (despite Andre being Jewish).

Meanwhile, when Kimmel agreed to appear on the show, he said to Andre, “I wanna do your show. Let me just check with my publicist.” Surprisingly, it turned out to be the exact same publicist. They had seemingly forgotten about their prior confrontation with Andre and were now perfectly willing to accommodate Andre. “What time would you like Mr. Kimmel to show up?” they asked, as though they had not threatened to fire him the day before over his supposed antisemitism.

This story, as Long pointed out on the podcast, perfectly illustrates the hollowness of both the threats and the promises made by publicists. They can threaten to get someone fired and then turn around the very next day to book another client with the exact same person. Hollywood!

Source: Life is Short with Justin Long