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Imagine a world, Nick, where you get fast, reliable phone coverage without a long-term contract, without frustrating consumer service, and for a price that doesn't want to make you scream. Sounds great. I want to live there. I was hoping for a scream. Ah! Or cry. Or both.
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Would you consider switching to consumer cellular? Oh. Putting me on the spot. Yeah, I am. I have, by the way, and I highly recommend it. It's a commercial, but this is the truth. Consumer cellular offers the same fast, reliable nationwide coverage as big wireless without the
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jacked around by, you know, different. Yeah. Jacked around is okay. We can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I have been jacked around by phone companies in the past that, you know, I keep getting robot voices. And so it's really nice to have U.S. based consumer service. Yeah. And I also love how smart they are. They're smart. All right. For a limited time, you can sign up with Consumer Cellular and save $50 with promo code TED50.
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Who told you to go to therapy? Or did you see somebody you knew? I think I just knew it was time. And I'm also surrounded by comedians and writers all day, so I'm surrounded by people obsessed with therapy. Who are deeply wounded and deeply funny. Deeply wounded, deeply funny. Hi, welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes.
On this show, we talk to a lot of unique individuals, but I can say that there's no one quite like today's guest. Eric Andre is a comedian, an actor, a TV host, musician, probably more. You might have seen one of his pranks on YouTube or the Eric Andre show on Adult Swim, which he's been the creator and host of for six seasons. I have to admit, I was a little nervous to sit down with him. I was terrified I was going to be pranked.
Turned out all right, though. You'll see. Anyway, Eric is also the star of a hidden camera comedy movie that made me absolutely cringe with joy, if that's possible. It's called Bad Trip, and it's on Netflix. You need to check it out. I so enjoyed talking to Eric. I found him vulnerable and incredibly willing to be able to share some of the trauma that's been part of his life. Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Andre. ♪
You look great. I feel good. You're handsome. I'm handsome. What's your secret?
I have pickled jelly belly. If you make it to 75. Yeah. People just treat you with so much respect. I think they're afraid you may crack and break or something. But I've reached the Mr. Dance on the stage. Okay. So no Ozympic. No. Oh, should we start it? So we start doing it? Yeah. What is Ozympic? You take it and it stops the cravings, right?
Oh, it's not for the brain. No, it's for the belly. Oh, the belly. It's for the belly. But you're a tall guy, so no one has ever paid me to take my clothes off. You make a fortune taking your clothes off. I wouldn't say a fortune, first of all. A fortune. I make $300 a week. And second of all, I will pay you $5 right now to get completely nude. Well, guess what?
They paid me $15 to never get nude ever in front of them. That's a dollar amount I can't match. You haven't done that thing where you look at your skin and you go, what the fuck happened? And it happens in about three or four years very quickly where...
It's just very sad. Very sad. No, no, no. Yeah. Why am I doing this to myself? I don't know. You're beating yourself up. Let me take this back and say, because I watched for, at 8 o'clock, I got up and watched Bad Trip. I apologize for missing it when it first came out. No, it's okay. I'm surprised. But it is fucking brilliant. I'm surprised I'm here and you watched anything that I've ever done. It is brilliant. Thank you. Truly brilliant. I appreciate it. And I've never laughed harder, but what was amazing was how...
sweet and kind. I don't think you could do what you do if you weren't a sweet, kind, generous, big-hearted person. I really don't. Because if you were an asshole and you do scary things to people or put people in jeopardy, it would not work. And at the end, watching everybody who you did prank during the credit scroll, they were so...
loving and kind and thrilled and relieved. Somebody told you I read in an interview, but it's true. I fell in love with America.
watching that movie. It was like so much humanity in everybody. Yeah, that was the win of the thing. Because it's easy to make a prank movie cynical and feel mean-spirited and kind of give you an icky feeling. So it was hard to make it feel that way. Did you know that right off the bat when you started pranking people that you had to do it a certain way? Not really. Because on...
My show, I can prank people and just be a nightmare terrorist maniac. And it's a short show. So, but when you're in a movie, a movie is a different medium than a television show. Television shows only 22 minutes long. And, you know, comedy and a feature is at least 90 minutes long. So when you're with protagonists for that much time, you have to like them. You have to like them for a TV show as well. But.
You really have to, they have to be human. You have to empathize and sympathize with them and you have to like them and you have to,
You have to just hang out with them longer. So if you're hanging out with them longer... My show on Adult Swim is only 11 minutes, so I just get to be completely schizophrenic, absurdist, maniac, because 11 minutes, you don't have to invest in a character. But 90 minutes, you have to save the cat. You have to like the protagonist and hang out with them for at least 90 minutes. So because of that, we realized early on that the pranks...
All my destruction and destructive behavior had to be accidental. Chris Farley. He was a big influence. So like, um, once we realized that I had to be this lovable, lovable boob who just, uh, means well, and his heart is in the right place, but he's just like a very accident prone and, and, and, um,
uh, idiotic in a lovable way that kind of, uh, informed how to write the prank. So a lot of the pranks were, we call them help me, help me pranks. The pranks where the, the, the actor is in peril so that the, the marks that people were pranking kind of get on the hook and then get invested in whatever the scenario was. So how written is it? I mean, you obviously you have, the story was very written, you know, it's a narrative, uh,
It's a narrative told through pranks. So we had like a very structured narrative that we wanted to...
But once you're within the prank and you're interacting with the person, you're improvising and you're letting it go wherever. But you have written it enough so you have planned for as many possible contingencies. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like Curb, you know. Curb is improvised, right? But they've worked for three months on the structure. On the structure, yeah. So it's probably the most like... That movie was probably the most like...
out of anything in popular comedy. Did you love it? Are you proud of that? I'm very proud of it. Oh, I'm serious. It took me seven and a half years to make. It took me almost a decade to make. And I made no money, so all I have is pride. Our whole family went nuts for it. My wife today. I'm flattered by that. Yeah, Mary's son, Charlie, is like a fanatic fan. Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's really cool. Amazing. I am terrified of pranks. I am, you know. We'll wait till the end of this podcast. Sure.
Look under your, don't look under your seat. Did he have time alone in this room before I got here? No, I wouldn't have time alone. I'm off the clock. I came from so many shoulds and shouldn'ts. You know, it was like a gentleman never made, you know, it was rude, intentionally, unintentionally. This is from your parents? Parents and grandfather, very English. I do have, uh,
A fear of, oh, I don't want people to be suffering in any way if I'm pranking them and they don't know. Well, I'm a sociopath. No, but you're not because you don't take it out on them. You make yourself the brunt. The butt of the joke. Yeah. Because if you don't, you just become unlikable quick. But what's really cool and makes it almost, it's so dangerous to watch that it's riveting.
Yeah. Besides funny, you do see the danger. You do believe the guy's coming at you with a knife. Yeah. And it ups the level of... So when you laugh, I think you laugh even harder out of the relief that, you know, your hero didn't get stabbed. Did you ever get beat up? I've gotten manhandled. I've gotten manhandled and roughed up. Um...
I pranked Alex Jones at the Republican National Convention. Thank you. At this Bikers for Trump rally amongst a mosh pit of alt-rights. Wow. I haven't seen that. How did that go? That was a little bit sketchy. It was a little bit tough. What was the seed of the prank?
Alex Jones, this wasn't hitting camera. This was overt. Alex Jones was giving some speech outside at this rally. It was like a bikers for Trump rally and there was a lot of alt-right kind of proud boy type guys there. And in the middle of his speech, I jumped up on stage and I asked him to fuck my wife.
For no reason. I was just like, hey, I'm not. And he goes, oh, okay, you're from The Daily Show. And I go, I'm not from The Daily Show. I just, here's my hotel key. It's my kink. I want you to fuck my wife. And I just made everything I said after that was completely apolitical. I said nothing political at all. And I think it maybe hits harder when you watch it. But then I jumped off stage and kind of got...
Bodyguards were coming after you or no? We had one bodyguard, but he was kind of deep in the background. I don't think he was paying attention. I didn't think it would get that heated so quickly. But you should really watch it. I don't think I'm doing it service-wise. Sorry, I will. Well, I mean, I'm not giving you a homework assignment, but I mean, it's more effective if you watch it. But that was a little bit sketchy because it was an open carry state, so all those guys are like armed to the T. So, you know.
So you didn't grow up in Indiana. I grew up in Florida, Boca Raton, Florida. Woof. Yeah. Oof. Oof. Yeah. And I read that you and your dad and your sister were like the only African-American people of color in your neighborhood. I mean, it wasn't the most diverse place in the world to grow up. I don't think we were the only ones, but yeah, we were in a cul-de-sac.
And your mom was, was she there? My mom's a Jew from New York. And, and not down in Florida with you? Did you? No, yeah, she was, they, they were, my dad was from Haiti. They met in New York. My mom's from Manhattan. They got married in the seventies. They moved to Miami in the eighties. Then they moved up to Boca Raton and, uh, they were together. They got divorced when I was like 12.
But they were always there. My mom's still down there. Right. Yeah. And what was your pre-teenage years like? Were you, I mean, I was Arizona jumping on horses and doing that kind of thing. I wasn't jumping on horses. I was very, I was always a class clown. I was very nerdy and academic. But then I realized when I could act out and misbehave, when I could get laughs from misbehaving, then it was all over. Then I was, I was very hyperactive.
I was very, believe it or not, I was very ADD and hyperactive. And I just constantly got in trouble. I got straight A's in school, but I would always get in trouble. I would always like get suspended. That must have been confusing for them. I would always have like parent-teacher conferences because I was constantly getting in trouble. And they would drag my parents in and all the teachers would be like, his grades are fine. His grades are fine. He just won't.
He won't shut the fuck up. And I was bad. I was really bad. I would, like... I got suspended for mooning my friends. I got suspended for going to school barefoot. I one time...
You know the glass enclosure where the fire hose is that the fireman has to access in case of an emergency? One time I, like, purposely bashed my head through it to, like, make my friend laugh. And the glass is made to break. So the glass broke. I leaned back. All this glass sliced my head and my hands open. I was bleeding out of my head and my hands. And I didn't want to, like, blow the joke. So I just turned to my friend and I went, stigmata. I'm the second coming of Jesus. No.
I bled all the way to the other building and they made me go to the hospital. But I was bad. I was poorly behaved. When did you first have like an outlet other than amusing your friends and stuff for that energy? I was always playing music and I was always in shitty bands. And I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston. Upright Bass. For Upright Bass. I went to jazz school.
Yeah. And how did that come about? I mean, why music? I was just obsessed with music. I still am. I just was obsessed with music. So I knew I wanted to do something creative and
As a pre-teenager? I was playing piano since I was five. Wow. And I played tuba in band in middle school. And then I played cello and bass. I played cello for about three years. Really? Yeah. But I didn't have... Yo, yo, ma. Yeah. I don't have music in me. I like memorized the notes and I knew that that meant this finger here. But I never had...
music running through my soul kind of thing so i kind of gave up i started my parents bought me a my first little guitar because i put the cello on my lap yeah i tried to play it that way you know well how'd you pivot into acting uh i wanted to be a basketball player that's my doesn't make any sense that doesn't answer my question sure i pivoted that doesn't make any sense
Are you even listening? No, actually I'm not. Um, where am I? Um, just constant fear. There's going to be a prank coming my way. No, I went, I went, I went from, uh, yeah, cello was, I was just trying to identify with you as in music. I, cello was nothing. I barely, that was a blip. Basketball. That was my passion. And you went to college for basketball. Uh,
Uh, no. I thought that I went to a prep school in Connecticut and played basketball. And we won our league champion. But as I said, like any high school of like 1,200 kids or something would have cleaned our clock. We were a very small school. Then I went to... Mid-60s? 66, yeah. And were you part of a countercultural revolution? Were you smoking weed at halftime? No, man. I missed...
the 60s completely. Now, how literally? You were in the thick of it. I smoked. You weren't doing acid and shooting three-pointers? No, and I went to Stanford. So I was in San Francisco land in the 60s and missed it completely. How? How's it possible? Were you immersed in it? I don't know what. I was so didn't know. I was faking my way through school. I was so unacademic.
that I thought I'd have basketball, but that was the same year that Lou Alcindor, Kareem was a freshman at UCLA. And it was just like, oh, well, fuck, I'm not. This is not for me. And I was very sad, disappointed. But then I found acting my sophomore year at Stanford, and then the light bulb went off, and life made sense. And I transferred to Carnegie Mellon and then New York. And continued study acting. Yeah.
Yeah. Where did you graduate in New York? No, no. I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, then went to New York to look for work. And you started in theater? Yeah. How long, what was the gap between finishing school and Cheers? What were like those years?
Were you doing plays or were you acting? Doing plays, commercials, soap operas, anything. Were you waiting tables in the background too? No, I always managed to get a job. Squeak by on it. Yeah, and back then in New York, you could get, if you worked on a commercial on Tuesday, you couldn't collect your unemployment for that day, but they let you collect it for the rest of the week. So you could kind of scrape by.
Yeah. And this is in the 70s in New York? Yeah, went to New York in 72, left in 78. So it was a little less expensive than it is now. Yeah. You can afford a place. It was also a little crazier. It was very dangerous. Did you see some... My mom had to worry about Son of Sam in the 70s. She had to cut her hair short. Yeah, wow.
Yeah, it was just a nightmare. Where was Son of Sam in? What borough was that happening? Do you remember? I don't know. She lived in Harlem...
And then she moved to Queens. She didn't move to Queens until she had my sister. Huh? I think it was Queens or some, it wasn't Manhattan. I remember that. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. But where'd you live in Manhattan? Uh, West side, upper West side. It was kind of bombed out back then. Really? Amsterdam and, uh, 90th. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh.
But I was acting, so I didn't care. I was taking classes. I was auditioning. It didn't matter. What a cool time to be doing that there. Yeah. Yeah. How old are you? 40.
So New York to you. So you were what, 80s? You were coming of age kind of thing? I was born in 83. 83. Yeah. I saw New York when I was six years old. I went to the top of the World Trade Center and I saw when they had graffiti on the trains. I caught like the last sliver of like. Was Times Square, had that been gentrified? It was dodgy, but I don't really have memories of that.
I have the earliest memories of Times Square I have was kind of in the gentrification stage. Right. Okay, so you got to Boston, you got to Berkeley. Yeah. School of Music. Are you still pranking your friends? Yeah, I was still being a fucker. I was still being a nuisance. I was being a nuisance.
I would like wear a tuxedo for no reason and skateboard around the hallways on the carpet and stuff like that. And in your mind, just going for the laugh today? Or are you thinking... Just going for the laugh. I had nothing to do with that. I didn't...
want anything to do with comedy professionally. I just thought it was too hard and intimidating. But you thought about it? Is that why you thought it was too hard? For like a millisecond, I had great admiration for stand-up comics, but I was like, I could never do that. That seems like a nightmare. And then at the very, as I was finishing school,
The music industry was kind of falling apart because Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing and stuff was fucking everything up. So like, you know, the records...
of the 70s, the cassette tapes of the 80s, the CDs of the 90s were all irrelevant because they started to... Like streaming today. Yeah, the technology was deteriorating, so we're being replaced. And my friend, Brian Moskin, he was just like, you're so funny, you've got to try. And Boston's a very comedy-rich town. There's comedy clubs everywhere. And my band...
At the time, we would play these open mics and all the venues I would play at these open mics would always have like an open mic comedy night. You know, we'd play on a Monday and then be like, come back Tuesday for the comedy night. And was that the first time you stood up? That's when I started trying it. Yeah, that's when I started trying stand-up and I fell in love with it instantly. And I also, I loved it also out of convenience because I had to schlep my upright bass everywhere my whole college career.
you know, all four years of college. And then when I started doing standup, I was like, I don't have to haul any equipment anywhere. I can just show up and just have, there's a microphone already there. So it was out of like laziness and convenience. I started doing standup. And would you write your, your material? Yeah. And what was it? The same kind of attitude. It was very, um, loud and, um,
hyperactive and hyperbolic and psychedelic and absurdist. And it was, yeah, it was like the beginning of like my...
my figuring out my point of view it was are you getting paid at this point or no in boston no not a dime not a dime not a dime for like the first decade of comedy and did you but you had a following did people and not in i only did my first year in boston then i moved to new york and i started doing stand-up but i was like working day jobs and it really took like a decade of of uh
just crawling through the sewer before I made any money doing it or had any following. Right. Yeah. It was a decade of just the, the, the doltrums. I was like, oh shit, I'm not close enough to my microphone. Actually, could you back off your mic just a bit? But yeah, it was a decade of poverty. And where? I'm sorry. That was in New York? I only did one year in Boston. Then I moved to New York. Yeah. For five years.
Then I moved to LA after that. I finally like got an agent and a manager. When, when did you go? It was kind of working. A little success is coming my way. When did you? Little teeny, the very first thing I booked when I moved to Los Angeles was Curb Your Enthusiasm. And I got, I got two lines. I said two lines to Larry. It was the episode where he thinks,
his ex-wife is cheating on him with Jason Alexander. Cheryl Hines. He thinks Cheryl is cheating on him with Jason Alexander. It was the Seinfeld reunion. Oh, wow. So he thinks, so he gets paranoid. I don't totally remember the premise. He gets paranoid that
having an affair and I played a PA on the set of the Seinfeld reunion and he's kind of asking me for I had no laughs I was just delivering exposition right
And he was just asking me, but I had two little lines and I was like, oh yeah. And it was, and it was like one of the first auditions I had when I moved here. So I was like, I'm going to fucking make it. And then after that, I didn't book shit for like years. I couldn't, I would fall apart in auditions. I was just so, so nervous. I would clam up. Um, but that was one of the first, uh,
And then I would kind of scrape by on commercials and stuff like that. Did you audition for scripted shows when you fell apart? Yeah, I was auditioning. I was auditioning for whatever, anything, anything and everything. And I kind of, like, when I was in New York, I would scrape by on commercial work and some stand-up gigs. But I had various day jobs that I termed. And then I moved to L.A., same thing, and I scraped by on little. Then I started...
really focusing on acting in a way that I had in New York when I was just focusing on stand-up. By doing what? By taking classes. Oh, yeah? And actually reading and rehearsing. Who did you study with? I studied with Leslie Kahn and John Rosenfeld, and they whipped me into shape because I knew nothing. And then just...
educating myself. I read, you know, that Joanna Merlin book, Auditioning. Is it Auditioning or Audition? I just had to like demystify the process for myself because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I read Uta Hagen's book. Yeah. I never read Stanislavski or Strasberg, but, uh,
And after reading Uta Haag, it felt like I was like, I think I need to learn by doing more than continuing to read. So Stanislavski, I think that book's like 112 years old or something like that. Easily. Might not be totally relevant. But you know what you do so well, which not all stand-ups do, is you throw the ball back and forth. A lot of stand-ups will go, I got the ball. Yeah. Let me run with it. Yeah. Whereas you really are bouncing off of people and –
impacting them and allowing yourself to be impacted. Yeah. That's really cool. Well, I also feel like that's where comedy lives. You got to like be in the moment and experiment and it gives it an element of danger and suspense and surprise. You got to almost surprise yourself. Why make life harder than it needs to be? With Consumer Cellular, you get the same fast, reliable nationwide coverage as big wireless, but without the cost of big wireless.
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Uh-huh. Up to half the cost. He's watching the pennies. He is watching the pennies. Yeah. How's the service been since switching? I can tell you I put it to a test because I live in a canyon.
And service is, you know, usually drops out like mad and I haven't had any dropouts. So that's pretty cool. That's a good stress test being in a canyon. Yeah. Like literally canyon. Literally. You're at the bottom of this huge. Not huge, but you know, big enough to, are you trying to get me to tell you where I live? Can you post the dress on the screen? Let's yeah. Let's get Ted's dress up there.
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I agree. It was hard for me to look at anything else besides, you know, my face and all of that. But the background is so clear. It was amazing. Those browns. In my hair? In your hair, yeah. Really, really vibrant and really rich. They were not dyed. They were real. So anyway, Nick, tell us about OLED glare-free technology.
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So your folks, when did your folks go, oh my God, you're a big old hit and this was working and we're so proud of you. It took them time because my talk show is very bizarre. I think my mom got it. My mom's American, so she got it right away. My dad, it took him a while to figure out. Is this all right for you to be doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, my dad was...
He escaped a third world country, then like put himself through med school and became a doctor. So he didn't want me to do it. That takes some seriousness. Yeah. He didn't want me to be in Korea. He'd be like, go to law school or med school, go to med school. And I was like, I don't want to fucking, I don't want to go to med school. Um, so I think, uh, and you know, comedy is cultural and I'm doing a very, uh,
very specific nuanced uh just somebody somebody who you cared about asked you just to describe your comedy what would you say i would say it's very uh loud and bombastic and hyperactive and um uh gonzo and absurdist and psychedelic
But also... Those are all the adjectives I got for you. Right. But also, you're talking about... I mean, obviously, I keep going back to that movie because I literally just watched it. And I'm not over-exaggerating. I have never laughed so hard and enjoyed it. I was so tickled to meet you after seeing that. Thank you. But there's a point of view. There's a world point of view of...
In my mind, you're almost saying without saying it, you know, America is a pretty cool place. Yeah. You know, and people of color are some compassionate. Right. You know, they've seen it all. Right. Had it all done to them. And look how compassionate they still are. We showed the movie an early cut. We went to Sacha Baron Cohen's house and we showed him an early cut of the movie because we needed help. The movie was in shambles in the beginning.
But he said, he goes, the win for your movie. He goes, my movies are showing, try to show off how shitty and hypocritical politicians are and the people in power. He goes, your movie, The Victory, is showing how
people of color and working class people are like good and good Samaritans and the humanity and the working class in America. Because I think like the news doesn't cover
And social media doesn't cover people being nice and people being philanthropic and good Samaritans. You know, the news and social media just covers the extremes in humanity and chaos and violence. And if you had done a straight movie, meaning narrative dialogue, all of that was scripted. Yeah.
It would have felt like a bit of a lecture. It's a tough thing to put that out in the world. If you did a pure news interview 60-minute segment, you know, not. But when you combined it with the danger of pranks, it really was impactful. Yeah, thanks. Pretty cool. Thanks. Appreciate it. So what kind of toll—I've heard you talk about anxiety. Yeah. Was that from, you know, as a kid? Always. Always.
When did you know, oh, wait, this is something I have? I think always, but I didn't know it was how punishing it was until I started going to therapy.
At age, if I may ask. Is this okay to talk about? Yeah, I'm an open book. 25, 26? Because something stopped working or the toll was too great? It was around when I couldn't book an audition to save my life when I was having fall-down panic attacks in an audition. And you know what? Auditioning is nerve-wracking. I need to give 25-year-old me some credit. It's a nerve-wracking experience. You know how many auditions Steve Martin has been on? How many? One.
He went on one once. Somebody saw him do stand-up and they were like, oh my God, you'd be great for this role. It was like in the 70s, early 70s. You got to come in on audition. And he went in the room. We went in the waiting room and he saw like eight guys that looked like him. And he botched the audition. And he was like, there's no... What world am I going to be able to compete against 10 guys that look like me and give this performance in this nerve-wracking situation?
where I'm going to beat out the competition all the time. He goes, it just seems, he's like, I don't like this. I'm barely, I'm shittily paraphrasing. I remember reading his book and, and, and, and, and feeling like, okay, I'm not alone. Auditions are, are especially, especially if you need it. Yeah. When you need it and you're broke and you're like, you just come to, and I was like, just got to LA fresh off the turnip truck and,
And I just didn't know what the process was. I didn't understand it. It all seemed just like this intimidating, confusing thing to me. I needed to demystify the process a little bit. Were you doing stand-up at the time? I was doing stand-up at the time. Here in L.A.? Yeah. I would do stand-up at the time in L.A. and I would hit the road. But also, I just had the wrong... I was doing everything wrong. I didn't really know. I think like...
stand up as his own craft and acting as his own craft and I just needed to put in the work but that's when I started going to therapy because I was like I can't function I'm pursuing a career that I need to my nerves are just through the roof that's a kind of bold move a lot of people go don't they turn to other things that don't work you know yeah I've definitely done a shot of vodka before an audition before
Not every audition I've ever done has been sober. I understand the shot. I could never understand smoking dope before an audition. Hell no. No, that would be a nightmare. The weed has never hit me right. No. It doesn't.
Weed is advertised like it's soothing and calming. For me, the opposite. Every insecurity just bubbles to the forefront of my mind. It just puts me into a panic. So who told you to go to therapy? Or did you see somebody you knew? I think I just knew it was time. I don't think anybody needed to tell me. I think I was like, let me just give it a shot. And I'm also surrounded by comedians and writers all day. So like, I'm a...
I'm surrounded by people obsessed with therapy. Who are deeply wounded and deeply funny. Deeply wounded, deeply funny, and therapized. So it just seemed to make sense. And then when I started therapy, my first therapist told me about meditation, and I started doing meditation daily. TM. Yeah, twice a day. And then right when I started therapy and doing TM, that's when I started booking auditions and feeling like, oh, I had some agency over my anxiety. Yeah.
But it's like it never ends, anxiety. You know, it's just part of the neurochemicals I inherited from my parents. So I just... And anxiety is, I don't have what you have, but I have had paralyzing anxiety attacks. During a performance? I used to have them maybe once every year. Yeah.
while performing, but performing not live or something like that, but on a TV show or something. And it would be just mind-numbing. It's horrible. They couldn't put sentences and words together. You're completely out of body. It's so disassociating. And it felt like high school. That's horrible. Here comes my line, and I have no idea. Should I cry? Should I have no idea? Just immobilizing. Yeah.
I, sometimes I go, why did I pick this career choice in those moments? I'm like, why am I doing this? Why am I, this is a nightmare. And you feel all alone. Everybody has stage fright. Anybody that doesn't have stage fright, I think they're sociopathic. Like there's no way you don't, you learn to cope with it and it eventually becomes quieter as you, uh, as your career grows, your confidence grows and you, you know, but, uh,
I remember I did a cartoon animated movie with Reese Witherspoon was in the cast. And to me, Reese Witherspoon is this all-star, you know, veteran actor. You know, she's done a million movies, television shows. And even her, she was like...
Backstage, she was saying something. She's like, I was telling her I went to a hypnotist. I was trying to stop eating sugar. She's like, I've been to a hypnotist once, but it was to work on my stage fright. I have like crippling stage fright. And I was like, why don't you have like a shelf full of Emmys and Oscars and like whatever, anything else? So,
We're all going through it, but you just feel alone. You feel alone. When you're having bad anxiety, you feel alone. You feel like you're the only one on earth experiencing that, but everybody... I had a scare on stage 15 years ago. I don't know that I will ever... I shouldn't say never, but if somebody said, do you want to do theater? It's like, no. Never again. No. I had so much fear and adrenaline pumping. We were doing these...
Um, the Atlantic theater is this great theater that feeds into Broadway and their friends. And they asked me if I would like to come in and do this one week of, um,
it's like a 20 minute, my piece was a 20 minute monologue. They had, it was the 25th anniversary and they had 25 writers and they told them, write anything you want, opera play, monologue, whatever. And then they would celebrate the theater's history by doing five of these, you know, each week. Yeah. And so there's very little rehearsal. Right. And,
uh i watched somebody a few days before i was to do my week of this uh go up on a line because very little rehearsal and i thought well somebody will whisper it from the wings
No, from the back of the house in the lighting booth over a microphone. The line is, you know, I better think of something. At least be clever if you have to ask for a line. And it was an 18 minute monologue. Oh, my God. So stupid. And it was brilliantly written.
But I psyched myself out. Totally. I walked in the dark, you know, to my place. The lights come up and probably 10 seconds in. Oh, no. Total blank. And it's like sticking your finger in a light socket. It was like. Horrible feeling. Am I going to cry? Fuck, I can't believe this. My daughter's in the audience. Shit. Do I apologize? Shit. All within a second.
And then you asked for the line and I said, Darcy, what happens next? Thinking how clever. And I got the line, but Darcy had just sat down on the lighting booth with a cup of coffee and didn't have any fucking idea what my line was. So it just got worse and worse. My daughter had to walk me around the block in New York like four or five times drinking gallons of water. I had so much.
Adrenaline. And then my sweet friend, sorry, I'll shorten this. Director said, hey, Ted, why don't we meet at the theater half hour, hour before the show?
He was so sweet. And he got me there and we just ran it over and over and over again. But literally every time I got to that line, my body freaked out and froze. But he had me say it so much that that night when my body freaked out, my mouth kept flapping and I got past it. Yeah.
It was horrible. It was horrible. Yeah, I do this thing I got from music school. I have to, I'll type my lines out. So it's just my lines so that there's no stage directions or anything else from the script. I'll just, it's a line memorization exercise where I just, I'll type my lines. When I memorize them, if I can't say them out loud five times in a row without fucking up, I don't have a memorize. So even if I get to the fourth time,
If I mess up, I go back. I start back at one. I need to say it out loud five times in a row. And I say it like very monotone. Just like da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So I don't get trapped into a line reading. So I just say very monotone. And I have to do it five times in a row. And then I feel confident enough to go to set and know even if I have a fall-down panic attack, I at least have the muscle memory where I can just –
like poop the line out of my mouth until my anxiety calms back down and get to the line and then come back to earth and then just be in the scene. Do you think any part of you would, I know this is going to sound stupid, but would miss your anxiety as a performer if you stood up and there was no anxiety? Yeah, I think the anxiety...
I think it can hurt if it's a full-blown panic attack, but it only helps because I have done stand-up shows where the room is lightly packed. I don't have any new jokes I'm excited about, and I don't feel any anxiety. I feel bored. Then you're fucked. And then you bomb. Then you're just like, you're phoning it in, and that's when I bomb. You have to have a little bit of pre-show jitters. It's just about like...
managing the full-blown panic attacks yeah i don't usually i find myself in uh like in a car on a set being driven to the set by teamster or whatever sometimes i don't put my safety belt on because i'm in hollywood everything's fine everything's taken care of i'm in my little bubble yeah if i walk around in a dangerous neighborhood but we're shooting and i'm in a bubble everything's fine yeah you you
go into a situation and some guy for real chases you out with a knife. Are you thinking though, oh, it's okay though, I'm in my bubble? Or are you literally, oh, this could go really bad? I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, oh, this could go really bad in the moment, but I'm also...
Fast forwarding ahead to the editing bay where I'm like, I'm so glad I got a great reaction. This is so high stakes. We have footage. We have usable footage. So I usually am more in a positive state of mind, ironically, when people are attacking me because I'm like, well, that's something to watch. But it doesn't always mean just because a Marx reaction is violent doesn't always equate to content.
to comedy. Sometimes it's just dark. Yeah. Sometimes it's just like, there are scenes in the movie, this one guy was going to like break a bottle over my head. And we used a little bit of... At the bar. At the bar, yeah. And you cut out just as he started to move around the bar. Yeah, we used a little bit of him in the credit scroll, but he was really intense and gnarly. And it was in the body of the movie and it just was, it never got a laugh at any of the test screenings and we just kind of, sometimes it's just too...
like it's more each than laugh out loud. So, so it doesn't always equate, but at least, you know, you get, people are reacting. And you got to see the guy with the knife. I do believe at the, in the credit scroll where you got, when he saw him realize what was going on or am I making that up? I don't know if we showed his full reveal, the knife guy, we showed the guy that was going to break a bottle over me. Um,
Right. But, or whatever he was going to do, he was going to punch me or something. But I do remember he took a shot when he decided I need to punch this guy. He did do a shot of Jim Beam and he got up and yeah, that's what I yelled popcorn. This is going bad. Yeah. I can't remember how you cut out of it, but it was,
It was clearly a good time to cut out. It was a good time, yeah. I think I was urinating next to him. It wasn't real urine, but he... You can understand why someone might get pissed off at you. He was a little bit upset. Did you ever get anxiety during the filming of that? Because... Every day. Really? That's a nightmare. Because he's like the real... I find usually my anxiety is...
It's not really based on something real. It's not like... It's kind of both. I have this generalized anxiety that's based on just fiction and my overactive brain. And then I have real fear, like, oh, I might get punched during this bit. And you only have... It's like a soap opera. You only have one take a lot of times. Like the...
I think the hanging off the roof thing, we only had one take. The honky-tonk, the cowboy bar, we only had one take. So you spend all this time and money and energy and writing. But that's not anxiety. To my mind, that's fear. That's concern. That's real. You should be fearful of this, right? That's true. For me, anxiety usually is like,
It's your mind looking for trouble. It's my mind looking for trouble. I don't get anxious if I cut myself badly. I don't get anxious. Right. I get fearful, but I can get anxious about the thought of. Right.
Yeah, that's a good distinction. I think that's a good distinction. Can I keep on this part? Because I'm such a neurotic mess that I find this part interesting. I'm surprised by that. You seem like a cool summer breeze. Right. I have psoriasis everywhere just because I... From stress? Yeah. Yeah.
No. Yeah. Well, I used to. You don't have psoriasis anymore. Not anymore. Because they have these wonderful little biologics, they're called, where you can take a shot of something. Is it like an eczema? Yeah, but then it becomes something that gets into your bones and stuff. And so psoriatic arthritis becomes a problem. You had it your whole life or recently? Right after, seriously, right after the 25-year-old who auditioned for the doctor's
That's when I started. And took Valium. So it was a stress reaction. Yeah. I do believe. I think you have a propensity and I think diet and a lot of stuff can contribute to it. But I do believe it's stress. You ever read those John Sarno books, Healing Back Pain? Yes. Those books saved my life. I had back pain for years. Until you recognize, oh, this is. Oh, it's a stress reaction. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, to the point where I was going to get back surgery, and I read those books. I know so many people who cured themselves. That guy's a saint. Those books saved my life. I recommend them to everybody. Do you think you have fear on top of anger? Or just fear? Like internal rage? Yeah, I think it's your id.
resents the pressure you put on yourself as an adult. Your childlike id. It's a battle between your id and your superego. Some Freudian shit. Yeah. It's just the pressure. And also, a lot of the people...
In the book with a lot of the symptoms had like high pressure jobs. One was like, I watched like a 60 minute documentary about it first before I read the book. And it was like a television producer, a lawyer, people like that really put a tremendous amount of pressure. People going through like big fundamental family changes, like their father just died and they had to take over the company. Right. Or there was one patient he talked about where they were in a failing relationship.
Their marriage was failing and they literally got a rash under their wedding ring in the shape of a wedding ring, which is pretty poetic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I totally believe that stress manifests in the body. Like, how could you not believe that? You know, so...
Have you done, somebody told me that you had talked about it, so I feel okay asking about it. And I don't even know, MDMA? I have done MDMA, yeah. Microdosing, I mean. I've done macrodosing as well. But that's self-treatment. Have you done it under a guidance? Yes, I've done MDMA therapy. Is that the same things that they try with vets who have post-traumatic stress? Yeah, big time. Yeah.
And can I ask, because I've never done it, but I'm really curious. Well, now's the time I put it in your water. That's the prank. So far, it makes me want to pee. I was going to do more than that, brother. So can I ask what that is like? So you take it and you become in a whatever state that that drug makes you in, and then you talk? Yeah.
Well, you do a bunch of talk sessions first without the medicine, without the psychedelic. It's a psychedelic amphetamine. So you do a bunch of talk sessions first. So you just talk about whatever issues are bothering you. But the doctor is really kind of paving a pathway so that by the time you do the session with the MDMA, you kind of get right to it. So you do a bunch of talk sessions in his office first.
Then when you do the MDMA, he comes over to your house. You put on headphones. You put on a sleep mask. Oh, wow. You get comfy. You get on your sofa with a blanket and in your pajamas. You take the MDMA, start playing music. And then you just kind of sit there. And you only kind of, I only kind of like peek through the sleep mask and chime in where I'm like,
Oh, remind me to tell you about when that kid pushed me off of a bicycle when I was seven or something. You know what I mean? Like something will pop up, but you're really kind of just going through and how I can, I'll break it down. A doctor can break it down better than I can. But you know, you store trauma in your amygdala. There's an almond shaped gland on your brain called the amygdala where trauma is stored. And usually when you have trauma,
that trauma gets triggered if you try to access it when you're sober. You know, let's say if you got bit by a snake when you were a kid, every time you saw something snake-like, you see a garden hose out of the side of your
That your amygdala gets triggered. So what the MDMA does or, you know, they do psilocybin therapy. They're doing all these psychedelic therapies. It allows you to access your trauma in a way that you can't access it while you're sober and actually reroute your neural pathways around the trauma so that you can process the trauma and alleviate the triggering symptoms that happen from the PTSD response.
Because without the drug, you may be... It's too painful. It's too painful to access without the drug. So you rewire. Especially if you're veterans with PTSD, there's nothing more. There's no deeper trauma. So it allows you to enter those old traumas in a way that you can't
while you're sober. Is it meant to be a one-off or do you do this for weeks or months or however long? I've only done it, I've probably had like 30 or 40 talk sessions with him and I've only done it, done the MDMA with him twice. And how did it feel afterwards? Incredible, amazing. And relevatory like you went? Relevatory, yeah, yeah.
Like, shook up major things that needed to be rearranged. Yeah. It's pretty incredible. Yeah. Isn't it now? I mean, now it's a full-on FDA goes yes or somebody's going yes. Let's experiment with this. Yeah, it's on the precipice of being legalized. I mean, there are places, like Oregon has decriminalized all drugs. It just needs to happen on like a federal level. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And did that happen? I saw a meme recently. It said, I like the war on drugs because drugs won.
Thank you to our friends at Samsung. They just sent over this brand new OLED TV for the studio. We decided to watch some reruns of Cheers on it, and I just want to say the details, colors, and contrast were incredible. I agree. It was hard for me to look at anything else besides, you know, my face and all of that. But the background is so clear. It was amazing. Those browns. In my hair? In your hair, yeah. Really, really vibrant and really rich. They were not dyed.
They were real. So anyway, Nick, tell us about OLED glare-free technology. Anti-glare technology limits light distraction on your screen so you can watch everything you love with nearly no glare. And that's validated by the color experts at Pantone. Colors on your TV look as incredible as they do in life. Whether you're streaming an HD movie or watching live sports or looking back at old reruns like Cheers...
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Where did your moral, whatever, guiding principle or spoken or unspoken come from? How do you know what's good and bad? How do you behave in life and where did that come from? I guess my parents. I guess my mom has been like a civil rights activist her entire life. She marched on Washington. When she was 18, she saw Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech and
She's always been into like political activism for marginalized people. My parents are both very kind. They're neurodivergent, but they're very sweet. Almost to a fault, though. They're a little bit... They're so people-pleasing that they fall into codependency. But...
Yeah, I guess from my parents. My mother was, you know, my parents, you know, I got unconditional love, which right off the bat is one of the biggest gifts you can give to your kids. But my mother was really good at dealing with the positive side to life, you know, enthusiasm, creativity, encouragement, joy, happiness, willingness, all of those things. But anything petty or angry was,
was to be suppressed you know no no no no don't don't dwell on that so that i grew up
I didn't have a choice to be nice. I had to be nice. And that is kind of bogus because you can only really be as nice as you can be shitty. Right. You know, and once you start seeing, oh, yeah, I actually am really shitty and I am really mean spirit. I can have all of these things. Then I can choose to be nice in a situation. Yeah. And that took me a long time to figure out. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, my parents didn't... My mom's alive. My dad passed away. But my parents were very like... They're not... They're very academic and egghead types. They're very like bookworms, but they lacked emotional intelligence. But they're very sweet. But I was also...
I also was born and came into consciousness like at the back half of their marriage as they started drifting apart. So that was tough. They were married for almost 25 years. So my sister was born in 1974. I was born in 83. So she kind of got the ascension. Right. And I got the decline.
And when they got divorced, she was 20 years old. She was already in college. And I was like 11 turning 12, which is awkward, awkward coming of age. And they, they, they were not good at explaining that they were getting divorced either. I had to like put it together. My dad was just like, Oh, I'm going to live somewhere else for a little bit. Uh, uh, and I was like, well, what does that mean? And they never fought either. So it was very strange when they got divorced. It was like,
He's going to live somewhere else. Okay. And then I had to be like, wait, you're not getting divorced, are you? And then later, a few months later, I was like, are you guys getting divorced? What the fuck is going on? And they were like, uh, uh, yeah, that was their speech. That's how they let me know. I cried my eyes out. You didn't know. They had no capacity to be like,
son, we love you very much. Yeah. This has nothing to do with you. This has nothing to do with you. We're both going to be there for you 110%. We still love each other, but our love for each other has changed. I'm no longer going to live here, but I'm still going to be close and I'm going to be in your life. None of that. And my dad was a psychiatrist. He should know how to fucking, what the ramifications of just going, I'm going to live somewhere else. Uh,
And then me, a 12-year-old, having to put it together and ask them. I had to drag it out of them. What's going on here? And that's the time in life, especially then when you should have all gentle focus coming your way so you can develop into who you are as opposed to have to take care of your parents. No, it was not great. And I resented them for that forever. But then I realized...
They just didn't have the capacity to communicate what they needed to communicate at that moment. They just are both on their own parts of the spectrum. And they just don't have, they just, they don't possess the qualities to communicate.
It's such a good place to be when you finally realize, oh, my parents are just these really nice folks who are doing the best they can. Yeah, they're human. Yeah. Everyone's flawed. Nobody's perfect. It's a relief when you realize that. But you, I did resent them for that for a long time. And I love them. I mean, it wasn't like I hated them at all. I love them.
I love my dad to the end, and I love my mom very much. But my dad passed away last year. My mom's alive. My dad had cancer. He had pancreatic cancer. Were you around him? Towards the end, yeah. All the time, towards the end, yeah. It doesn't matter how old you are, man. You cannot prepare yourself for losing a parent. No, it's unbelievably painful. In a way, it was like...
God, I didn't know how much I loved my dad until he started dying. Yeah. But it was miserable. I mean, it's fucking miserable. It's really miserable. But you know what? All this stuff came out and he died slow enough that we got to have talk and have closure and bring up stuff that he always avoided. My dad was very avoidant. Very aloof, very avoidant, very like avoided any kind of like emotional vulnerability his whole life. And...
He's just from a different world. He's from the Caribbean. He's raised Catholic. And he's neurodivergent. So he's like this bookworm from this repressive Catholic, old school, third world Caribbean culture. It's like we're just from two different universes. I'm from the suburbs of Florida. So it's very hard to...
pull out emotion out of him and vulnerability. So we just like, I was like, this is it. If I don't get, it's very awkward to bring some of this stuff up, but I just have to, I just have to. So, and he, he was willing and he was willing. He, he was as responsive as I've ever seen him because he kind of knew he had to get some of this stuff out. And, and he told me, he never told me he loved me my entire life. He never said, I knew, I always knew he loved me, but he never said, I love you. And,
until like a few days before he died. And he just eked it out. It was like with his like kind of his last breaths and it came out of nowhere.
He was sitting and it was like right before we started, we did hospice at the house. It's right before hospice started. And he was constantly watching TV and I would just sit next to him in his bed. And then I, I just turned off the TV and I looked at, looked at him. I was like, I don't want the TV on. Let's just like talk. I don't even, if it's awkward. And out of nowhere, he was just like, and he looked skeletal at this point. He was at the very, very end and he had no energy. And he just, I don't know where he went.
I love you. And I was like, what? Like the words I've been waiting to hear my whole life. I was like, what? What do you mean? Wait, wait, what'd you say? It was like, I didn't say I love you back right away. I was like, what? And he goes, I love you. I never meant to upset you. Oh, wow. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And I started bawling, bawling, crying, goosebumps, telling the story. And then he looked at me like I'm bawling, crying. And he goes, can you ask for my nurse? Yeah.
So I go, okay. I go, Angela. I go, Angela, my dad needs you for a second. And he was very almost like childlike in this stage. And his nurse came in and he turned to his nurse. He goes, why is my son crying when I'm telling him I love him? I'm like, because I love you too, dad. I love you too. I've been waiting my whole life for you to tell me that. And we just started bawling, crying. Oh, my God. Bawling, crying. And then the eerie part was he looked at the foot of his bed and he goes,
My two friends are here. And I was like, well, and it was just me and his nurse. And, and I was like, what? And he goes, my two friends, my two friends from my, my child are here. And I go, dad, it's just me and Angela. It's just me and your nurse and in your room. And he looked at me like, oh shit. Like it's the end kind of, you know? And my friend is, um,
a death doula. She's like an end of life care. She does hospitals. That's brilliant. She told me it's common that when people are dying, they'll see two people from their past, like somewhere in the room or something like that. I'm like, really? She's like, that's a really common thing. Like I hear like, oh, I saw two men right before, or my dad or my mom said they saw two men before they died. So, and then the next day, I think like,
Yeah, I think it was like the next day hospice started and he's just kind of a zombie. Yeah. Yeah. And he would, he would kind of say, be lucid every now and again, but not really. It's just like, you know. Did any of this change your anxiety and your performance stuff or is? A little bit because I think I was always, I was always seeking my father's approval because he was so aloof in my childhood. So I didn't realize how much that motivated me.
So now he's dead. I'm like, I felt, you know, it's recent too. I felt like a lack of, not a lack of motivation, but like trying to find motivation and inspiration from elsewhere. I didn't realize how much that was an engine. Yeah. After he died. Yeah. He died in December. He died recently. So, Oh, it's been a re yeah. It hasn't even been a year. It's like pretty recent. I've also, uh,
everyone's on strike this year. So it was like, it's just been a bizarre year, but it was actually like a forced sabbatical. I traveled a lot. I went to like Africa for the first time and I traveled, you know, I went to Peru and I did Ayahuasca. I went to Ghana and Morocco and bopped all over Europe. So I, I, I took it as an opportunity to, um, self reflect and find new, um, new motivation. Uh, yeah. Yeah.
It is a, it is a big, bizarre spiritual shakeup. It also feels like when your dad dies as a guy, I'm like, Oh, I was like, Oh, I'm an adult now. I felt like, Oh, I'm an adult. Oh, I'm in charge. I don't want to, I still feel, I feel like a kid, but now I'm, I'm not, now I'm an adult. Now I'm in charge. I kind of, I'm in charge of really anything besides like, you know, paying my bills. But, um,
Yeah. It's a very, it's a big existential shakeup. It's strange. Yeah. It's surreal. Yeah. I don't know where we are time-wise, but I have... It's three in the morning. It feels... I gave you MDMA. I have so much respect for you as... Thank you. As an artist. Thanks. And watching your film today really was a highlight. Oh, thanks so much. But... Yes. I really enjoyed...
talking about the emotional stuff. To me, that's what connects me to people and all that. So thank you for sharing all of that. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Appreciate it. Do we get to like hug when we see each other in the street? Yeah, anytime. You can hug me, you can talk to me. Thanks, man. Thank you. Eric Andre, everybody.
Please check out his book with Dan Curry called Dumb Ideas, a behind-the-scenes expose on making pranks and other stupid creative endeavors and how you can also too. That's it for this week's show. Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to a friend or an enemy, whatever.
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You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Eddie Harrelson, Sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Liao. Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer. Our senior producer is Matt Apodaca. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Graf. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.
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