Even though Hillary Clinton’s episode of Between Two Ferns just came out yesterday, almost 30 million people have tuned in to watch the presidential candidate coyly sling bon mots at Zach Galifianakis as the comedian makes jokes about white power and misplaced emails. And while the Funny Or Die video is fascinating, it may be even more interesting to think about how that clip actually came together. Luckily, Vulture nailed down the video’s producer, Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman, to find out how that happened.
Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis: Hillary Clinton from Funny Or Die
According to Aukerman, the clip was shot on September 9 and was entirely Clinton’s idea. The majority of the clip was improvised, without much vetting of questions from the Clinton campaign, and took about an hour of the candidate’s time. Though Clinton had pneumonia at the time, Aukerman said she was in good spirits, and was happy to just “sit [there] and be roasted.” As he told Vulture, “It’s interesting, because we have such a good time shooting it, you wish you could put out a separate video where it shows us having a great time.”
Aukerman says Clinton was especially fond of the video’s jokes about Trump Steaks, and that the joke about the “white power tie” required a little bit of set up on both Galifianakis and Clinton’s parts. Writers on the tête-à-tête included Aukerman and Galifianakis, as well as Sarah Silverman, Kulap Vilaysack, Neil Campbell, David Caspe, Lang Fisher, Dave Ferguson, Mike Gibbons, Fran Gillespie, Tim Kalpakis, Jon Lovett, Pat O’Brien, Jeff Ross, and Alan Yang.
Aukerman also says he “can’t imagine a universe” where the Trump campaign “would ever even reach out, or that it would be a good video even if it was something we wanted to do,” thus reiterating what we all know to be true: That liberals are far funnier than conservatives.