Members of America’s funniest fantasy football league often find themselves in hilarious situations and are never light on inappropriate jokes. Three actors from FX’s “The League” brought that crude humor with them to Ohio State.
Jon Lajoie, Stephen Rannazzisi and Paul Scheer from FX’s “The League” spoke to a crowd of about 1,300 OSU students at 8 p.m. Tuesday in the Ohio Union’s Archie M. Griffin Grand Ballroom.
“We are going to guarantee that tonight will be 75 percent better than Nicholas Sparks’ night,” Scheer said at the opening of the show, referring to an upcoming Ohio Union Activities Board-sponsored event.
“The League,” which just wrapped its fourth season in December, is a semi-improvised comedy about six friends who get very competitive in their fantasy football league.
The three actors talked about their wild experiences while on set, including working with attacking monkeys and being naked on camera.
“The worst one was I had to run down the Dallas football training field naked,” Lajoie, who plays Taco MacArthur, said. “If you’ve never run down a football field naked before, it is very hard to not get an erection.”
After the opening of the show, a highlight reel from “The League” played to familiarize students who might not have seen the show. After that, each actor performed an individual stand-up routine.
Scheer, who plays Dr. Andre Nowzick on “The League,” talked about some of his drunken escapades and gave students advice about drinking alcohol.
“Enjoy them now because by the time you become 21 you expire from shots,” Scheer said. “You can do them until 21, but then s— gets bad.”
Scheer also talked about social media, and why some things like parking garage Twitter accounts and people who make Facebook pages for their pets aren’t acceptable.
“If you’re following a parking garage on Twitter, kill yourself,” Scheer said. “It’s not going to get better.”
Rannazzisi, who plays Kevin MacArthur, talked about what it’s like to be away from his family when traveling for work.
“The most difficult part, if I had to pinpoint one thing, would be trying not to smile while I pack my suitcase,” Rannazzisi said. “Trying not to skip down the driveway to the town car awaiting my arrival off to No-More-Questions-Land, which is in Daddys-Gonna-Do-Drugs-Ville.”
Rannazzisi also talked about his children – how his 4-year-old son is always running around the house naked and about the time he ate crayons.
“His s— for the next three days looked like Jackson Pollock paintings,” Rannazzisi said. “I didn’t know whether to flush them or have them curated.”
Lajoie, said he might be easily recognized from his popular Internet videos, such as “Show Me Your Genitals” and “I Kill People.”
“Or if you’re the cat my parents gave me when I was 5, you may recognize me as the kid who put you in the microwave and made you become retarded,” Lajoie said.
Lajoie, who is known for his inappropriate yet catchy songs both on YouTube and on “The League,” played a few songs for the audience. Among those songs were “Fear Boner,” “High as F—” and even a song that Lajoie claimed he wrote when he was only 4 months old.
“Put your titty in my mouth b—-,” sang Lajoie. “Take off that bra and whip out that nip.”
To end the show, “The League” stars answered questions from the members of the audience.
One student asked Lajoie how he comes up with his crazy songs featured on “The League.”
“The creators of the show will have an idea … and then we kind of collaborate,” Lajoie said. “We kind of go back and forth until we figure out the most amount of sexual references we can shove into a song.”
Another student asked how much of “The League” is scripted and how much is improvised by the actors.
“We get an outline every episode that is like 10 pages long and the scenes are outlined,” Rannazzisi said. “There’s just no dialogue, so we just do about 20 takes of the scene and we kind of improvise dialogue and then a lot of jokes come out of that.”
Justin Scheuner, a first-year in economics and political science, came to the event dressed as Mr. McGibblets, a purple Elmo-like creature that Rannazzasi’s character, Kevin, hates in the show.
“I bought the costume and I figured that other than Halloween this is probably one of the few opportunities I would get to wear it,” Scheuner said.
At the end of the show, Scheuner was invited up to the front of the room where he danced to Mr. McGibblets’ theme song with “The League” stars.
“It was pretty awesome,” Scheuner said. “I couldn’t see anybody in the crowd because of the lights, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Premal Bhatt, a fourth-year in biology, thought the actors were like their characters on the show.
“I thought it was really funny,” Bhatt said. “A lot of the characters are just like what you’d imagine they’d be like and are similar to their characters on the show.”
OUAB sponsored the sold-out event and it was free to students. OUAB declined to comment on the cost of the event.