YouTube / Kimmel
The John Krasinski vs. Jimmy Kimmel ‘Prank Wars’ started about seven years ago in Los Angeles. The two lived directly across the street from each other when John and his wife, actress Emily Blunt, broke into Jimmy Kimmel’s house to leave some Christmas lawn ornament decorations.
Living in such close proximity, literally across the street, John Krasinski and Jimmy Kimmel became pretty good friends (as did their wives). They’d share meals together, their kids are presumably friends, and a few times each year they’d prank the complete shit out of each other.
As far as the pranks go, some years are a lot better than others. Sneaking a LIVE reindeer into an office was one of my favorites. John hiring a half-naked (d*ck out) Santa Claus to surprise Jimmy outside of his office was good. It’s actually astonishing how long this has been going on for.
This week, Jimmy’s show is filming in Brooklyn as they do every year. He was born and raised in Brooklyn and shoots Jimmy Kimmel Live in Los Angeles these days so he likes to bring the show back East to where he grew up for one week each year. Jimmy’s guest last night was John Krasinski and I think you can see where this is going.
John started out the segment by kind of hijacking Jimmy’s role as the interviewer and asking Jimmy questions about their prank war. Then he called for someone to roll the montage of their past pranks followed by John’s latest prank on Jimmy.
Jimmy has a good point. This was probably a pretty clear violation of Airbnb’s rules. But I sincerely doubt they’ll give a shit since this is pretty much a publicity stunt for Airbnb.
I’m a little surprised that Jimmy Kimmel isn’t staying in a hotel with his family. It’s kind of funny to think about a guy like that being frugal and avoiding NYC hotel prices. Sure, that full brownstone single-family home in Park Slope was probably expensive as shit. I bet you could even look up the listing and find out how much it cost after John Krasinski displayed the address for everyone to see.
The problem with this prank is that New York, like Los Angeles, has a rich history of leaving celebrities the f*ck alone. I lived in SoHo for about 4 years and would see celebrities almost daily on my morning walk to the BroBible office. I shared a private dog park with a few celebs. You either treat them like regular New Yorkers or you leave them alone entirely.
Nobody’s going to show up at Jimmy Kimmel’s Airbnb to harass him unless John Krasinski hires paid protestors which he very well might, that could be the icing on the cake with this prank. John could also go the extra mile and pay those pranksters to stay at Jimmy Kimmel’s Airbnb for the rest of the week. That would really make this prank good. As it stands, this is one of the more lackluster pranks in their prank war but the montage was great.