Eric André

The real work is The Eric Andre Show, which he created, hosts and co-writes, and which ran on Adult Swim from 2012 to 2023. It is a talk show in the sense that there is a desk, a band and a guest, all three of which exist mainly to be destroyed. Guests arrive without being told what will happen and the show films what happens to their face.

The skill underneath the chaos is real and quite rare: he can hold a bit long past the point where everyone in the room wants it to end, and he does it with a completely open, delighted expression that gives his victims nothing to push against. Bad Trip is that method extended to a feature, hidden-camera pranks on genuine strangers with an actual plot stitched around them, and it is much warmer than the television show because the strangers keep turning out to be kind.

The industry, faced with all this, has mostly hired the voice. Azizi in The Lion King, Luci in Disenchantment, Mark in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Darius in Sing 2, John Dory in Trolls Band Together. On camera he has been Deke on 2 Broke Girls, Mike on Man Seeking Woman, Lyle Lissons on The Righteous Gemstones, and a part in the Marvel miniseries Ironheart. He also records music as Blarf, and he appears as himself in Jackass Forever, which is roughly where he belongs.