Today, I want to know which celebrity were you the most surprised that they cleared the use of their appearance on a “candid” TV show (like Punk’d).
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
There are a lot of “candid” TV shows out there, where people do pranks on celebrities and stuff like that. Most of the time, it makes the celebrities more relatable, but sometimes, you see some sides of the celebrities that you probably wish you hadn’t, and then it becomes a question of, “Why the heck did they agree to let that air?”
The celebrities have to agree to let these shows air. Punk’d had PLENTY of pranks over the years that never aired because the celebrity wouldn’t sign off on it.
My pick would have to be Zach Braff on Punk’d. The idea for the prank was that Braff just got an expensive new car, and some 12-year-olds fake spray-paint it (presumably they were older actors who just looked young enough to play 12). Braff LOSES HIS SHIT, chases the kids down, starts punching one of the kids (that’s the part that got cut out of the episode, but Braff later admitted that he “pummeled” one of the kids), and basically just loses it for the next few minutes of airtime, continuing to threaten to punch the kids, talks down to the security guard for not protecting his car, it’s just SO embarrassing.
Here’s the prank (for as long as it remains online. I can’t promise it will remain on YouTube):
Okay, so that’s my pick, what’s yours?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at brian@poprefs.com!
