Ken Marino either got arrested for punching Nick Kroll on the set of The League, or just said he did for your amusement
In what is either a real-time chronicle of a strange, violent conflict in the alt-comedy world, or (most likely) some sort of surrealist Twitter performance art whose joke we don't quite get, Ken Marino has spent the morning tweeting that he punched fellow actor-comedian Nick Kroll during a taping of FX's The League, after which he was allegedly confronted by cops and asked to leave the set before being arrested. "I know this is gonna come out soon and just wanted to give my side of the story," Marino's tweet "confession" began. "Yes I did punch @nickkroll but I had my reasons." Marino went on to say, "Don't judge me until u hear my side of story. It's complicated and I, NOT @nickkroll, was more of the victim. For the record, I like @nickkroll. It's not that. It's about respecting someone you work with. Of course I'm sorry for it getting physical. But I am NOT sorry for following my heart."
Marino, so far, has not done much to explain his side of the story, other than claiming he was "sort of defending myself" before cheekily asking, "Question: When is it ok to punch someone? Answer: When they say something you don't like." And though he's insisted that Kroll "man up" and admit his culpability in the supposed incident, he also apologized: "I don't know how else to say it. I'm sorry @nickkroll. Can I please stay and finish out the episode. #imessedupbig." But, according to Marino, that's definitely not going to happen now: "Well it's official. I'm under arrest! This has gotten out of hand!"
Of course, obviously there's been a lot of skepticism about whether any of this is real, or some sort of (effective) publicity-generating stunt—particularly given the premise that Marino has supposedly been dealing with the cops this whole time while simultaneously documenting every minute of it on Twitter. By way of "proof," Marino did tweet a photo of his own bloody hand, saying he wasn't sure whether the blood was Kroll's or his own from punching a mirror. And The League co-star Paul Scheer offered his own below photographic evidence of what appears to be Marino escorted off the premises by a security guard—though Marino's goofy stance here sort of belies its veracity.
Kroll, meanwhile, has been relatively quiet, saying only, "Always fun having guest stars on @theleaguefx but sometimes ppl don't know difference Btwn fun and dangerous," adding that Marino and other guest stars Ike Barinholtz and Charlie Sanders "won't be returning," then offering up a Martin Luther King quote for good, probably ironic measure. Barinholtz and Sanders have also chimed in, saying "some weird shit just went down" and that "it was really f'd up," while series co-star Katie Aselton Duplass has offered, "I'm having a hard time taking sides in the @KenMarino @nickkroll kurfuffle. they were kinda both being bitches." Even Marino's fellow State alum Michael Ian Black got into the act.
But while we've reached out to both Marino and Kroll to confirm that this is all just an elaborate Twitter comedy sketch—in which case, it's a pretty clever use of the medium—obviously we would err on the side of this all being fake. For one thing, there's this tongue-in-cheek statement from The League's official Twitter feed: "We'd like to officially condemn @kenmarino's violent and unprovoked attack on the much, much weaker @nickkroll." For another, there's this supposed post-arrest tweet from Marino: "LAPD telling me i can't use my phone in squad car. But one cop a fan of Party Down so he's letting it slide. #LAPDcooldude"—and we all know that no LAPD cop is a "fan of Party Down." (And then there's the idea that he's already posted bail.) Anyway, fake or not or almost certainly fake, it's been pretty entertaining—and everyone's definitely talking about The League now.
UPDATE: Ken Marino has replied to our request for a statement with "No comment."