If you thought actor Jonah Hill was as obsessed with comedy off the screen as much as he appears to be in many of his roles, you might be right.
Though the prankster ways of the Don’t Look Up star apparently didn’t impress Netflix during a recent press tour for the streaming giant’s latest comedy, it apparently did garner the admiration of Academy Award-winning actor and co-star Meryl Streep.
The prank in question revolved around Hill using an adolescent digital fart machine, something that was given to him by Veep actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus — whom Hill called “the coolest” — as a wrap present from a previous movie they did together.
Hill explained in an interview on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show Monday night that he was telling Louis-Dreyfus about the upcoming press tour he was slated to do with fellow Don’t Look Up co-stars and big name actors like Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Tyler Perry.
“I’m like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I’m with all these fancy people and I have, like, a really stupid 3-year-old fart machine, right?’ And so Julia, being awesome, gets me this as a wrap gift,” Hill told Fallon after demonstrating said remote-controlled machine to show the audience how “digital and dumb it sounds.”
Hill explained that he would activate the inappropriate sounds when reporters brought up the topic of climate change, to which Don’t Look Up satirizes the government’s lack of response — only in the film, it’s an imminent asteroid collision with Earth that the U.S. President, played by Streep, chooses to deny.
When it came to using the fart machine, Hill said his castmates “did not find it funny,” except for one, that is.
“Meryl Steep, being the U.G. legend that she is, did find it funny. Which is why I ride for her any time, day or night.”
Hill went on to explain he even received word from director Adam McKay that Netflix, who produced Don’t Look Up, asked him “multiple times” to ask the actor “formally to stop using the fart machine during press for the film.”
Here’s how it all went down with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on Monday night.
Don’t Look Up has a limited theatrical release Friday and comes to Netflix Dec. 24.