INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Justine Santaniello: As host extraordinaire, why don’t you show me how it’s done and welcome our first guest?

Kristine: Alright girl I got you. Although I know this one right here, you do not need any help Justine, but I’m happy to help co-host with you, so very happy to welcome to our Lifestyle Today, for the very first time, a guy who really needs no introduction, he’s gonna get us laughing, from “Impractical Jokers” and “The Misery Index” it’s James Murray!

Justine: Woo!

Kristine: Hey Murr!

James Murray: Thanks for having me! You’re kidding me? It’s my-my honor.

Justine: You guys have known each other for such a long time now. How has your friendship changed over the years? Especially now that you’ve been doing “Impractical Jokers” for so long.

James: It’s definitely closer than ever for sure. But it’s interesting, like we started as friends, we still are friends, of course they’re my best friends for life, but it’s interesting to be in business with your best friends too. For a decade now, right? We started filming jokers in 2010, and here we are-oh my gosh it’s 2021! We started filming 11 years ago! Holy smokes! It’s crazy. So sort of like be talking and to these guys every single day for 11 years is a bit much. The only times we took off were my honeymoon I didn’t talk to the guys. When Joe went on his honeymoon he didn’t talk to us. You know, like those are breaks, but otherwise it’s-it’s-it’s great. They’re my-still my best friends, but best friends are also the worst.

Kristen: Now since it’s just you with us it’s the perfect opportunity to embarrass the other guys, so we want to know what stands out as one of the most embarrassing stories you can think about them. Anything goes.

James: I’ll tell you I think-I think generally I get the worst punishments. Any rational human being would agree to that. But the other embarrassing ones I think it was particularly embarrassing seeing Sal get scared by children in a corn maze. I mean he’s a grown adult. What’s he doing with his life? That was embarrassing. Watching Joe as “Captain Fat Belly” riding on top of the-the tram over the east river, the Roosevelt’s Island Tram, that was really embarrassing because he does not have the body to be a superhero at all, so that was a big one. And then for me, I mean, they shaved my eyebrows off and my license still to this day has no eyebrows. I look like a-a potato going through a bad divorce. You know? It’s ridiculous.

Justine: Alright, so here’s your chance to give us all of the spoilers. What do you think is the most standout moment from season nine?

James: The-the-the punishments have gotten bigger and more personal at the same time. Probably because the pandemic we had to almost like reimagine, “how do we punish each other”? We can’t do big public events, things like that. And I’ll give you an example, so I-I-I’ve never in my life owned a car, I’ve never owned a house until literally this year that just passed, and I got married and got-bought a house. I’ve never owned anything in my life! So I’m proud of like-I’m-I’m finally a home-owner and I own a car finally! Right? So I come home like two months ago, and the guys had painted my lawn pink, and that’s what it looks like, and they had arranged for a home and garden magazine to come photograph my lawn and my-my house. So I had to frantically try feudally to mow the lawn with a little push mower to try to get it to turn green.

Kristine: Well you guys have definitely stayed busy with season nine of jokers and “The Misery Index” and “Dinner Party”. When you guys were first starting jokers, did you ever imagine that it would ever be this big?

James: Yeah you-no you never ever think that it’s gonna go the distance like this ever. We started filming in 2010 for jokers. Here we are 11 years later still to be filming on season nine, and have “(The) Misery Index”, and “Dinner Party”, and the tour and the movie came out last year like one of the last movies before everything shut down is a blessing. It does not escape us how lucky we are and how amazing our fans are. Literally not a day goes by that the four of us aren’t like, “I can’t believe it’s still going on,” and what I get to do for a living is to just make people laugh.

Justine: Thank you so much for being with us Murr this was so much fun!

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