Zach Galifianakis faced a potential ban from interviewing Hillary Clinton after insisting on making light of her infamous email controversy.
The ‘Hangover’ actor famously grilled the former Senator on his Between Two Ferns web series during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a chat with Conan O’Brien on his podcast, Galifianakis revealed that Clinton was unenthusiastic about participating in the comedic segment.
“I recall interviewing Hillary Clinton and sensing she didn’t want to be there. And I completely understand why,” he shared.
According to Galifianakis, Clinton’s team initially instructed him to avoid discussing the emails. He responded by offering to cancel the interview altogether, stating, “That’s fine, we won’t do it.”
Ultimately, to his amazement, Clinton’s team backed down and let him proceed with the jokes.
‘They were like, “OK, we’ll do it.” Well, you can ask, because it’s not that important to me to do it the way they want to do it. You have to, if you’re going to come in a comedy, you got to, the way we want to do it,” Galifianakis said.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Secretary Clinton for comment.
Zach Galifianakis was nearly banned from interviewing Hillary Clinton for demanding to joke with the former First Lady and Secretary of State about her email scandal
The ‘Hangover’ star infamously roasted the ex-Senator on his Between Two Ferns show ahead of the 2016 presidential election
Galifianakis added that he wishes that comedians who invite Donald Trump on their podcasts would push back against him more often but instead ‘suck up to him.’
He and O’Brien both suggested it would be good for Trump to show he’s in on the jokes about him.
‘It’s humanizing,’ Galifianakis said.
Clinton ended up savaged and almost speechless as her surprise appearance on ‘Between Two Ferns’ saw her asked if she thought she should copy Donald Trump’s tactics – and mocked about her emails.
The comedian also interpreted her secretary of state title to mean that she was an actual secretary, asking the Democratic nominee how Obama liked his coffee – ‘like himself?…. Weak’ – and what her typing speed was.
Clinton, according to reporting from Politico, was inspired by President Obama’s use of the program to get young people to sign up for Obamacare and thus pitched her own appearance herself.
‘It was actually her idea, strangely enough,’ the web series’ producer, comedian Scott Aukerman, told Politico’s Hadas Gold. ‘She told her team she wanted to do it and that she really liked the one with President Obama, so that kind of made the process really easy.’
‘We didn’t have to go through the hoops we sometimes have to go through in order to even get Hollywood people to do it,’ Aukerman added.
Speaking to Conan O’Brien for his podcast, a discussion of how comedians and politicians confront one another led him to admit Clinton was not interested in the bit
He and O’Brien both suggested it would be good for Trump to show he’s in on the jokes about him
Aukerman said that the interview was mostly improvised, with Clinton, at one point, almost whispering her plans about what she would do if she loses the election in November after Galifianakis wrong-footed her badly.
‘When he’s elected president and Kid Rock becomes secretary of state, are you going to move to Canada? Or one of the Arctics?’ Galifianakis asked the former secretary of state.
She quietly answered that she would stay in the United States.
‘I would try to prevent him from destroying the United States,’ she said of Trump.
‘So you’re going to lead the civil war?’ Galifianakis asked.
Clinton answered in the negative. ‘I wouldn’t take up arms. I think that might be a little extreme,’ she stated.
‘Oh, right, because you were saying before we were rolling that you wanted to take away everyone’s guns,’ Galifianakis joked.
‘I really regret doing this,’ Clinton replied.
Clinton was following in President Obama’s footsteps by taking a gamble and going on the show, which was popular with millennials, a voting bloc that the Democratic nominee needed to excite in order to win the White House.
She ended up losing to Trump in the general election.
