Eric Andre Doesn’t Want to Do Stand-up Anymore

Watching The Eric Andre Show always felt like you’d just entered some sort of lawless state. The titular host would destroy his desk every episode, then slowly torture whatever celebrity guest was under the hot studio lights with uncomfortable questions and surreal bits. Maybe he’d slurp up his own vomit in front of a horrified Lauren Conrad or start fighting his co-host Hannibal Buress in front of True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten. Their man-on-the-street bits, featuring Andre as a ranch-obsessed raver or any number of odd characters, especially shirked the law.

“Like, I used to just go out there and be a fucking maniac and then I got arrested. I got arrested, like a couple times,” Andre tells me over the phone. For the first three or so seasons, they never bothered to get permits for these segments, ending the bit whenever the cops told them to clear out.

The same wild ethos informs Andre’s first-ever Netflix stand-up special, Legalize Everything, which includes an awfully timely opening segment with Andre as an unruly New Orleans cop and anecdotes about the various drugs he’s taken. Though many of his fans aren’t used to seeing him in such a conventional format, Andre’s been performing stand-up since 2003. However, he warns that we shouldn’t get used to seeing him back onstage.

“I think I’m gonna retire. I think I’m one and done,” he says, later adding, “I want to move into movies and TV, and like, [stand-up] is just so hard. Some people love it. I have like a love-hate for it and I don’t—I feel like I’m better creatively served in a more visual medium.”

When I ask what exactly he hates about it, Andre promptly replies, “It is just such a grind. It’s a grind and like, the biggest frustration is when jokes work at first and then they get moldy and old and they stop working and you can’t figure out why and psychologically fucks with you.”

And as for what he likes about stand-up? “I think instant gratification. When you’re crushing on stage, you get that instant feedback from the audience, you know, versus like, delayed gratification of television and filmmaking, which is like, slow, a much, much slower process. You know, stand-up, you’re connecting directly to the fans and it’s just more of a rush, or invigorating.”

Andre’s transition to film has already started with the hidden camera film Bad Trip, featuring Lil Rel Howery, Tiffany Haddish and Michaela Conlin, which Netflix acquired the rights to in May, Variety reports. The veteran comedians were now on Andre’s turf, and Howery had an especially difficult time with the unpredictability of shooting a hidden camera film.

“Rel’s second day of shooting, he was like, ‘What is this bit?’ I was like, ‘We put our dicks in a Chinese finger trap and we’re gonna walk into a barber shop in a panic in, like, the hood and we’re gonna ask the dude if he has scissors to cut us out.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, okay,’ ” Andre recalls.

“And then we go in and the guy was furious and he looked for the barber. We go into the barber shop. The barber was furious. He’s pissed. He’s looking for his gun. He can’t find his gun, so he grabs his knife and chases us out with a knife,” Andre continues. The crew’s security guard jumped in and explained what exactly was going on to the barber.

“He went from like murderous rage to like, support,” Andre says.Howery was understandably shaken: “So Rel was like, ‘Dude, you’re gonna get me killed, Eric. I have kids. What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘Well, we got a great shot.’ ”

Another challenge of Bad Trip was keeping from being recognized. They purposefully avoided certain demographics who would know them—namely, college kids—and steered themselves towards middle aged folks.