Stars Lil Rel Howery and Eric André chat about their upcoming Netflix hidden camera comedy, Bad Trip, and the worst pranks that went wrong.
King of comedy Eric André (from the beloved Eric Andre Show) brings the hidden camera fun in Bad Trip on March 26. Teaming up with the of Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, André fine-tuned the story for half a decade before honing in on a buddy comedy road trip alongside Lil Rel Howery (Get Out) in the name of love.
When first love Maria Li (Michaela Conlin, Bones) saunters back into Chris' (André) dead-end life, he convinces his bestie Bud (Howery) to travel cross-country in his sister Trina's (Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip) car. Unfortunately for them, she's out of jail and none too happy about not having her vehicle by her sad.
André and Howery spoke to Screen Rant about the scariest pranks that went wrong, the no-holds-barred casting process, and the ideas they had to throw out early on.
Eric, I know that the development process started in 2013 and you had all manner of ideas before you cam up with this perfectly imperfect road trip. Can you share some of the things you had to toss out? What were some of the craziest ones?
Eric André: They were really bad. The earliest version of it was, like, me and Rel were best friends and my grandma was about to be evicted from her house because she owed $10,000 in mortgage. And then there was a film festival coming to town and the grand prize was $10,000 and I needed to make a crazy movie all over town using real people.
But it was so meta. It was like a movie within a movie within a prank movie within a movie. It didn't make any sense.
Lil Rel Howery: He was trying to make Happy Gilmore.
Eric André: That didn't work. We needed to simplify; we need to simplify and just make it like a classic, iconic buddy movie told through pranks.
Speaking of those pranks, I read that one of the early pranks went terribly arrived at a barber shop. What happened to you, Rel, and how did that shape your future days on set?
Lil Rel Howery: It was the first day, and we went to the wrong barber shop. Our security wasn't there, the cameras weren't even in there. And I don't know what this brother may have been talking about when we got there. I feel like he was like, "Let somebody walk in here..." Because he was so enraged.
And we were very nice. We were saying, "Excuse me, can I get some help?" Well, he just lost it. It looked like he was looking for a gun and couldn't find it; found a knife, chased us out the barbershop, we fall off the tracks. I'm under a car, my knee and elbow are scraped; the security guy jumped in front of him.
But the crazy part is this dude was enraged, and then they're like, "It was a movie," and he was like, "Oh, that is crazy. Where do I sign?" You're about to go to jail, bro.
But how do you guys deal with those situations? Though I'm assuming that wasn't always the case.
Lil Rel Howery: That's not true. I mean, there's been a couple of times. It wasn't that high, but there was the golf guy.
Eric André: Yeah, the golfer came after us. By that point, though, Rel was used to it. He was like, "Alright, guy's got the golf club. He's gonna murder us with that."
You had a lot of security in place hidden away, hopefully, to help you?
Eric André: We upped the security, because we were risking our lives.
Lil Rel Howery: What is funny is that one of the security guys we ended up getting was the one that kicked you out of the Chinese restaurant. We ended up hiring him.
Eric André: Yeah, there was one guy that attacked me so efficiently and threw me out of a restaurant, that we turned around and hired him as security for the rest of the shoot. We were like, "Man, you're really good at that. You want to work with us?" He was like, "Yeah, cool!"
Michaela did such a nice job considering that she was a newbie at pranking. Did you guys give her any advice, or did she slot right into that?
Eric André: We auditioned her properly. We had a round of auditions where it was just me and her acting - it's called a chemistry read to make sure the two characters play off each other well.
And then for the final audition, my producing partners and I were like, "She has to know what it feels like to do a prank." So, we met her at the mall, and we sent [Kitao Sakurai], my director, into a clothing store. We go, "Alright, Michaela, just go up to Kitao like you're his enraged ex-wife and start slapping him in the face and yelling at him and saying that he's cheating."
There were no cameras. We didn't even film this. We just wanted Michaela to know what it felt like to shoot a [prank]. So, she goes into this clothing store and she's like, "You cheated on me for the last time!" Michaela's tall and Kitao isn't, so she's looking down at him and slapping him. He's also trying to watch her with a director's eye, like, "Oh man, she's great. Oww!"
The lady in the mall had to break up the fight, and I'm like trying to film it on my iPhone, but I'm struggling. And she nailed it so hard. She was fearless.
Lil Rel Howery: Yeah, that's crazy. I did not know that story.
Bad Trip drives up to Netflix on March 26.
