Eric Andre Reveals The Real Purpose Behind Bad Trip - Exclusive

Eric Andre's buddy-prank comedy Bad Trip is making its long awaited debut on March 26th. The movie itself, if you've been following it, has had something of a bad trip on its way to screens: Andre's been promoting it since 2019, and it had its planned South by Southwest debut in 2020 derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. After no small number of technical issues, though it has finally landed on Netflix, and Andre believes that this is all for the best: in an exclusive interview with Looper, he called Netflix "the best venue in town." 

Even the tamest prank shows can be hard to watch, often by design. Nothing Eric Andre has done — or likely ever will do — counts as "tame," and that's especially true in Bad Trip. There's a lot of (to put it mildly) deeply awkward scenes in this movie, and there's no status Andre or Lil Rel won't sacrifice to get a laugh. Even so, Andre told us that the movie is ultimately made with good intentions, and it has a noble goal. Here's how he explained it.

"I don't want the movie to be cynical," Andre told Looper. "It's very hard to make a prank movie and not have some degree of cynicism or misanthropy. You know what I mean? And we had to keep my character and Rel's character sympathetic, because we're the protagonists. So, by keeping us sympathetic, it forced us to write all these, we call them, 'help me, help me' pranks, where we're in peril and where we remain sympathetic figures." Indeed, most of the pranks — all of which move the narrative forward — show Andre or Rel as victims. 

This had an interesting — and positive — side effect.

"Because of that, we brought out and awakened the Good Samaritan nature of people, which I think is good to watch right now, because America feels very divided [...] We feel very polarized, because our media focuses on our polarization and our differences. It doesn't focus on common ground. So yeah, I hope that it's a positive experience for people. I want this movie to heal America." Those are not just easy talking points, either. People go out of their way to help and comfort the Bad Trip cast, often putting themselves at some degree of risk. So, hey, maybe pranks will unite our nation.

Bad Trip debuts on Netflix on March 26th. Stay tuned to Looper for more exclusive coverage.