As some of you might recall, from 2003 to 2007 Ashton Kutcher hosted a show on MTV called Punk’d, in which Ashton tried pranking various celebrities from Justin Timberlake to Pink, who were not aware of being punk’d nor being recorded by hidden cameras. And while some of the pranks for the show worked beautifully, some did not – Simple Plan being the prime example of one of them.
The guys from Simple Plan were one of the first “celebrities” who Ashton Kutcher tried to get punk’d as back in 2002 or 2003, when the first season of Punk’d was being filmed. The actor/prankster decided to put them in an awkward situation, but before he could get them, Simple Plan figured it all out by finding all the hidden cameras in their car.
Chuck and Seb recently recounted this story in an interview for Alternative Press. So.. what exactly happened that day, you ask?
Chuck: Yes, we were among the people they were trying to punk on the first season before Punk’d ever aired. We made the list. So it’s a pretty crazy story… Do you wanna say what happened?
Seb: Yeah, it was a car one… I think they got..
Chuck: It was after we played a late night show… I think it was Jay Leno, or maybe it was Craig Killbourne back in the day. But anyway, we get picked up and there’s a limo waiting for us.
Seb: Dax [Shepard] is driving, which we don’t know at this point.
Chuck: But right off the bat, that’s weird because usually it’s always a van, so there’s like a limo there.. huh. And we get in the limo and right away the guy turns around and he’s playing our CD. And he’s like: ‘Man, I love you guys so much! Chuck, your drumming is so amazing. I’m such a big fan!’
Seb: And nobody EVER says that, so you know there’s something wrong there..
Chuck: Right off the bat I’m tipped off that something’s wrong, cause the drivers don’t know my name, shouldn’t know my name and he knows.
Seb: And here’s the kicker: we’ve been involved in hidden camera shows. You know, Pierre was on Damage Control. So we’re like very familiar with it. And basically like as soon as we sat down in the limo, we see there’s a camera in the Kleenex box, we see the camera in the corner there, so… it’s already fishy.
Chuck: And also our manager’s there and we always have a tendency when something’s weird, we switch to French. So right away we switch to French and our manager’s always trying to get us to speak in English because it doesn’t make great MTV moments if you speak in French. So there’s something weird. Then we keep going and then the guy has to stop at a gas station. It’s like: usually when you get a driver, they don’t stop at a gas station, they should’ve done it before, so it’s kinda weird. And a homeless guy comes up to the driver and starts asking him for money – he comes out, starts beating him up. He gets back in the car, hits the homeless guy and we’re just like: ‘Whoa, what the hell is going on?’ And here’s the kicker: I was kind of doing all the reading on Billboard magazine and all that and knew there was a show coming on MTV called Punk’d. Cause I read about it, it was announced like ‘oh, they’re gonna do a new show, it’s gonna be about like all these celebrities getting caught into weird situations. So I knew that was going on and I saw he had his work sheet on his dashboard saying ‘Punk’d’. So I’m like, man, I literally said: ‘I think we’re getting Punk’d by this new show by Ashton Kutcher!’. And that’s when they stopped the whole thing. He came out and he was really upset. He was like: ‘How did you guys know?’. Well, we’re smart!
And why are we talking about this over a decade old story now? Simple Plan just posted a never-seen-before throwback picture from this not very well executed prank by Ashton Kutcher [see above]. Head over to the gallery now, to check it out in full size:
