Judd Apatow responds to Paul Rudd’s bizarre Conan O’Brien talk show bit, sharing a funny story from the promotional tour for 2012’s This Is 40.
Judd Apatow responds to Paul Rudd‘s commitment to a bizarre talk show bit and shares a story about the actor from This Is 40. Since 2004, Rudd has continued to pull the same prank on former late-night talk show host, Conan O’Brien. Every time Rudd visited the show to promote a movie, instead of showing a clip from the movie, as is tradition, the actor would show a clip from the critically reviled 1988 movie, Mac and Me, of a young boy in a wheelchair speeding down a hill and off a cliff.
O’Brien, who is currently in development on a new HBO Max show, recently had Rudd as a guest on his popular podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend. The actor, whose next MCU project, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is currently in the midst of post-production, proceeded to describe his latest project, a new Audible show, to O’Brien before asking to play a clip of it. The project Rudd was describing, however, was completely made up and was just a setup to once again play the Mac and Me clip to a bewildered O’Brien.
Replying to a tweet from the official Team Coco Twitter account showing a video of Rudd’s latest podcast prank, Apatow shares his own thoughts on Rudd’s commitment to the Mac and Me bit. Apatow explains that, during promotion for This Is 40, he “begged” Rudd to not do the bit and to play an actual clip from the movie. Rudd agreed, writes Apatow, but then went ahead and played the Mac and Me clip anyway. Apatow writes that he now “respects” Rudd’s lifelong commitment to such a bizarre prank. Check out Apatow’s tweet below:
I begged Paul to not do this when he was promoting This Is 40 because we needed the real clip shown and the push. He said ok. Then he did it anyway. I respect that now. Lifelong commitment to bizarre jokes is rare and should be admired by all citizens. https://t.co/2SHUvoSg0o
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) March 30, 2022
Click here to see the original tweet.
While Rudd defied Apatow’s wishes for his This Is 40 appearance on Conan, the actor doesn’t pull the same prank on any other talk shows, meaning the promotion of the movie was likely not affected too greatly. Apatow is supposedly working on a script for a sequel to This Is 40 called This Is 50, which would see him re-team with Rudd once more. Although the release of This Is 50 is still quite a while away, it seems likely that, when promoting the film on whatever O’Brien’s new HBO Max show will be called, audiences will once again be seeing the clip from Mac and Me.
Rudd’s dedication to his Mac and Me bit certainly is unwavering. After first debuting it on Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 2004, the actor’s most recent stunt would suggest that he’ll also do it on a podcast when given the chance, even though, as O’Brien hilariously says, “It’s a visual joke.” If anything, Rudd pulling his Mac and Me joke on a podcast is even more funny, because it’s so unexpected. Fans definitely seem to get a kick out of Rudd‘s commitment to the bit, and it appears that Apatow does too!
Source: Judd Apatow/Twitter
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