The premiere of the 11th season of “Impractical Jokers” was almost the series finale

Warning: The following story contains spoilers for the season 11 premiere of “Impractical Jokers.”

“Impractical Jokers” started its 11th season with Joey Fatone as a special guest alongside Sal Vulcano, James “Murr” Murray and Brian “Q” Quinn.

In the hidden camera series, which follows the three lifelong friends as they compete to embarrass each other in a series of challenges, the NSYNC member was the big loser for the first time on the show, as each episode ends with an embarrassing punishment. But Quinn revealed in an interview with TheWrap that it was almost the series finale of the show.

“I don’t know why it worked out that way, but the last two episodes of season 10 were incorporated into season 11. So the season starts with two guest episodes. There’s Roy Wood Jr. and Joey Fatone,” Quinn explained. “The Fatone episode was the last thing we shot for the season, and we didn’t know we were going to be renewed. It was the first time we ended a season not knowing we were going to get more. So we conceived the Fatone episode as a possible series finale.”

In the episode, Fatone can’t contain his laughter while pretending to be a receptionist in the waiting room and calling out names of people who don’t exist, including Choke Norris and Joey Fartone. While in another challenge he succeeds in getting a woman to answer a phone while pretending to be a waiter at a restaurant, by the end of the episode he is the big loser with the most failures after Sal and Q make it through unscathed. Q decides to go get a drink at the restaurant bar, forgo the second challenge and accept defeat.

“We had to make a change after we got the renewal order because there was one place where I just messed up a challenge. I go to the bar and I just start drinking. And they say, ‘What are you doing?’ And I say, ‘Well, I can’t miss the episode and this might be the last episode of Impractical Jokers.’ So I just drink and the cast and crew come out and we all start drinking. And then when we found out it wasn’t the last episode, we just took the second part out.”

Fatone’s punishment is to become the host of a new show called “Joey Fatone’s Dance Party.” During the fake broadcast, Fatone must relive several well-known punishments from various seasons of the show, including a Novocaine injection in the mouth, wetting his pants, and singing a song with lyrics made up by the Jokers. The episode ends with him getting a permanent tattoo – another classic punishment from the show – that reads “Joey Fatone’s Dance Party.”

“We pulled out all the stops,” Murray added. “We played all our favorite classics and used all our favorite penalties on Joey Fatone.”

In addition to Fatone, season 11 also features Brooke Shields, Roy Wood Jr., Richard Kind, Joe DeRosa and professional wrestler John Silver as guests.

Read on to learn more about what to expect, the Jokers’ thoughts on the show moving to TBS for the first time, continuing after Joe Gatto’s departure, and why they don’t plan on canceling the show anytime soon.

What can you tell us about season 11?
James “Murr” Murray: We’ve been shooting for about five months now. There’s two months to go. It’s as funny as ever. We had a blast. We shot some absolutely horrific, unbelievable, hysterical punishments. One of my favorite scenes is we had Q at the Liberty Science Center in the planetarium. It’s pitch black in there, 80 people in the room looking up at the stars, and Q had to sneak up behind them with a bright flashlight and shine it in their eyes in the pitch black because he was looking for his weed dealer.

Brian “Q” Quinn: People started hitting me. It was pretty bad.

JM: It went from zero to 100 in four minutes. I couldn’t believe it.

BQ: I think we were all surprised. With penalties, you usually show up and don’t know what’s going to happen. We find out on camera. My first thought was: I don’t know, that sounds like it’s going to get really bad …Yeah, so it’s fun. We had a lot of fun. We left out that celebrity guest on every penalty this season. So it felt a little bit more like a back to basics. It was good. It felt like a pretty different swing where everything felt fresh and new.

Are there any other penalties that you like best this season?
JM: We put Sal in front of a room of seniors to explain his fitness program and show them how he went from 1000 pounds to 700 pounds, as if he weighed 700 pounds now. He lost all this weight and his routine when he walks into the room is just a stripper pole in the middle. Basically, he had to teach seniors how to striptease. And as a little twist, we brought his dad in as one of the people in the group. And so Sal does this striptease while his dad is in the room just throwing witty line after witty line at his own son.

BQ: Murray was kind of the MVP of last season. Even though I’ve known him since he was 14 and worked with him for so long, maybe Joe held you back. I don’t know. But last season he blew me away and I was hoping this season he’d calm down a little bit and I’d get a little more room to shine. But so far he’s developed a childlike joy in doing things without telling me or Sal… He derailed that thing the other day, in a good way. We go to interviews, Murray sneaks into the room beforehand and cuts out Sal’s chair cushions so that when Sal sits down, his butt goes all the way down and he’s sitting at the desk looking up. And we had a whole lot planned for Sal, we had all these ideas coming up and it all went away because Murray just went in and misbehaved. And it was the funniest pick. So Murray was at his best.

Does Sal still hold the record as the Joker who was punished the most, or did that change with Season 11?
JM: I think Sal holds the record, followed by me and then Q.

BQ: We generally try to balance it out so that we’re all losers equally. It’s just that Sal is so easy to mess with. He just fails a lot, so he’s easy to punish.

Impractical Jokers has obviously gone through changes with the departure of Joe Gatto, but how do you think the show has changed overall since it began?
JM: I think the show has always been changing. That’s our job as comedians, as friends, to make sure the show is constantly evolving and the format is changing. So if you look at season after season, we’re constantly tweaking and changing the format and the type of matches that we do and the goals of each match and that’s our responsibility. That’s literally our job to keep the audience engaged and keep the show moving forward.

I think the show has changed dramatically in 14 years. If you go back to Season 1, it’s literally a different show than it is today, than it was five years ago, than it was eight years ago. I think it’s a reflection of the changing times, how the culture changes, how we change as we get older, how our personalities change. I think one day psychologists will look at Impractical Jokers as a reflection of the culture and teach it in courses as a study of human behavior and how it’s evolved over nearly a decade and a half. So I would argue that the show has always been changing and evolving.

Although you’ve had guest hosts before to fill the void, was there any talk of him ever returning, even if just for one episode?
JM: I would be happy if Joe came back. I mean, it’s up to him, isn’t it?

BQ: We talk to Joe almost every day. There are no hard feelings at all. We understand his reasons. So there’s no doubt that one day we’ll work with Joe again. It was his decision to leave. We haven’t talked about it at all because I think we’re just processing the fallout as well. The last thing you want to do is say, “Hey, let’s get back into these troubled waters.” You know what I mean? But we love Joe, and if Joe came to us and wanted to do something, nobody would be happier than me.

Have there been any discussions about how long the show will run?
JM: I remember at the end of the first season we said, “We’ve done everything there is to do. We’ve played dentists, doctors, opticians, cashiers. There’s nothing left to do, we’ve played every job.” And here we are, 13 years later. I think our plan is to end the series around 2041.

BQ: We disagree. I say 45, Murray likes 41, Sal likes 38. So it’s always up for discussion. We never really think about it. We’ve always said the show will end when we’re not having fun anymore, and we’re still having fun. We’re also extremely blessed considering what’s going on in Hollywood. It’s a bloodbath out there, it’s a nightmare out there. So it’s great to continue to be employed and that our crew has a job that we love, on a show that people love. There are people out there who don’t like ‘Impractical Jokers.’ I’ve never met them because nobody ever comes to us and says, ‘Hey, man, I hate your show.’ It’s always, ‘Dude, I love your show. The show got me through the pandemic.’ We hear that all the time now. I’ve had people come up to me in bars who are about 22 and say, “I’ve been looking at you since I was nine.” We’re just swimming in this sea of ​​goodwill and I don’t really think about making a big exit – but time will bring one of us down eventually.

Speaking of changes, what do you think about the move of “Impractical Jokers” to TBS?
JM: It’s the same company. We’ve worked closely with TBS for a long time. We had a game show on TBS for a couple of years called The Misery Index. So all the people that run TBS have been part of our lives for many, many years. It’s a bigger network, bigger reach, more viewers, more hotel rooms, more prisons we’re in. It’s great. We’ve worked with these people for a very, very long time. It’s just a good transition. And all the reruns will still air later on TruTV. No matter where you want to watch it, you’ll find it.