Eric Andre: ‘I'll watch any interview that's a train wreck'
The last show you loved
Nathan for You, Nathan Fielder’s Comedy Central show. It was so brilliant, unique and high stakes – I’ve never seen a more bizarre approach to the prank genre. Every episode is a banger – there’s one where he gets this guy to casually admit he drinks his grandson’s urine.
The best performance you’ve seen on TV
Any interview that’s a train wreck. There’s a classic with Serge Gainsbourg and Whitney Houston on this French talk show; the host is translating the French for Houston. A very drunk Gainsbourg sticks his fingers in the guy’s face and says, in English: “You are not Reagan, I am not Gorbachov … I said I want to fuck her.” Or John Cassavetes’s interview when he’s wasted on The Dick Cavett Show, or Madonna on Letterman. They make for the best anarchic television.
The show you wish you could guest star on
Drunk History on Comedy Central. Halfway through I would smoke [the psychoactive plant] salvia or drink [the Amazonian hallucinogenic] ayahuasca and start barfing, crying and tripping balls. I have a few cocktails before doing late-night talkshows to calm my nerves; they have fully stocked bars in the green rooms. It’s like a blind date – you don’t want to show up hammered, but you don’t want to be totally sober, either. I put so much pressure on myself when I’m on someone else’s show that to be wasted on TV would feel cathartic.
Your favourite show when you were 10
The Ren & Stimpy Show. It’s the best animated series of all time, about an angry chihuahua and a dumb cat. It was short-lived, but dark and psychedelic. Its creator [Michael John Kricfalusi] is tragic – an accused child molester – but it was the first thing to show me that comedy could be scary. I had never felt fear and the desire to laugh simultaneously before. There was depth to that emotional response; it was provocative. Now I lure celebrities into my own haunted house and take them on a hell ride and terrorise pedestrians, similarly cramming absurdity into reality.
The role you wish you had played
I honestly have the best job in the world. The cast of Game of Thrones might make more money, but I get to fully purge my id with total creative freedom. I can even defecate on my desk in front of celebrities. Frustratingly, I take most of my shits in the morning (I do two back to back) and then I rarely defecate for the rest of the day, but this season I was trying to hold them in more. I wouldn’t say I’m desperate to defecate on my desk, but the fact that I can? That’s freedom. I want to defecate in front of Vice-president Mike Pence next.
The show that should never have been cancelled
The Dana Carvey Show. Carvey was the superstar of Saturday Night Live in his time, during the Chris Rock, Adam Sandler and Mike Myers era. This was his own sketch variety show; he could be edgier and punkier than on SNL. Everyone was fighting to get it, but he went with the biggest network and a primetime slot, on ABC after Home Improvement. It was on the wrong network with the wrong lead-in, so it got cancelled quickly. There’s a documentary about it [Too Funny to Fail] .
Your favourite TV moment
The Simpsons, season eight, episode 22. In the middle of the episode, they cut to Homer in this commercial for a Japanese dish detergent: Mr Sparkle. I saw it in 12th grade and laughed so hard I had to run to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and started convulsing. It has perfect writing, an onslaught of jokes per square inch. It came right when my American mind was starting to understand the bizarre world of Japanese TV. There was no YouTube then; we would trade obscure clips on video tape. And it was the funnest thing I had seen aged 17.