Eric Andre Show Season 5 Will Be Grosser And Weirder Than Ever

The Eric Andre Show remains one of the most unique and fearless programs on Adult Swim’s eclectic programming block. Right out of the gate, the show pushed Eric Andre to his limits with stunts and pranks. There have been plenty of series that try to blend unscripted chaos with the unsuspecting public, whether it’s Jackass, Nathan For You, or the works of Sacha Baron Cohen. But shooting The Eric Andre Show has resulted in injuries, the wrath of the law, and shocking body transformations for its star. Never one to turn down a challenge, Andre has made sure that the upcoming The Eric Andre Show season 5 is the craziest one yet.

The faux talk show subjects its guests to torturous, unsuspected acts. Even when guests think they know what they’re getting themselves into, Andre will make sure that everyone is thrown for a loop. Few comedians would be so committed to their bits that they’d make themselves look like Katt Williams for a season or go a year without cutting their hair or fingernails, but the lengths that Andre has gone for the upcoming season is even more absurd than his previous stunts. Andre even describes his new look as “unrecognizable.”

“I put on twenty pounds,” Andre tells Den of Geek in a recent interview ahead of his star turn in the feature film Bad Trip. “I got rid of all my body hair, shaved my head—I kept my eyebrows—but I Bic’d my head bald. I did a ton of tanning. I sat in many tanning beds.”

It can be difficult for a series like The Eric Andre Show to still be able to operate incognito in its fifth season, but Andre insists that these extensive lengths really masked his identity to the public. “I kind of made this weird Uncanny Valley version of myself,” Andre explains. “I looked like a Dominican guy that runs a bodega in my old neighborhood in New York. I looked older. I looked weird. I had a double chin. I looked like a bum, to be honest.”

Even the elements of The Eric Andre Show that are relatively controlled and take place within the studio have been turned up another level in the new season.

“We would very reluctantly or not at all tell the celebrity guests the name of the show so that they’d just come in blind. However, we had these pranks that were foolproof and were going to get a big reaction out of people, whether they were familiar with the show or not. It doesn’t matter once rats and locusts are falling on you,” Andre laughs.

There’s been a lengthy break between The Eric Andre Show’s fourth and fifth seasons, but in the interim time there have been some surreal specials that the show’s team has put together, like the spinoff celebration, KRFT PUNK’s Political Party. The special put the strange Eric Andre Show side character in the spotlight and took a more political slant that was able to go to surprisingly deep places. Andre hints that there could be more KRFT PUNK specials on the way that go to even more adventurous places, like Antarctica, in an effort to get to the bottom of the “flat Earth” issue.

“We’re expanding our universe, for sure. We’re onwards and upwards.” Andre expands on the absurdity of the KRFT PUNK character. “His spinoff was warranted. That character is such a dumb idea. But we’re in the business of dumb ideas. We’re in the dumb idea industry.”

And thankfully for fans of Eric Andre and his Adult Swim series, the dumb idea industry has never been stronger.

The Eric Andre Show season 5 will premiere in 2020 on Adult Swim