Ellen Relaunches Her Prank War Against Matt Lauer
Ellen Degeneres launched a new salvo in her prank war with Hamptonite Matt Lauer on her daytime talk show, Ellen, last week when she shocked the Today Show host by having a man wearing a dress pop out of a table during their on-air chat. The surprise, which came after the two talked about how they’re both turning 60 and of recent 20th anniversaries—her coming out, and his tenure on the Today Show—scared Lauer so much he actually jumped out of his chair, yelling, “No!” as he ran away.
“It’s so petty. It’s so childish,” he said, taking the joke with good humor once his adrenaline died down. “You promised,” Lauer added. “Now I wet my suit!”
Ellen, of course, was doubled over laughing.
Lauer and Degeneres have been going back and forth at each other since 2015 when she used computer effects to make Lauer appear as if he were wearing kinky bondage gear while interviewing the stars of the film Fifty Shades of Grey. Lauer retaliated by filling Degeneres’s car with thousands of ping pong balls and a cardboard standee of himself, but it didn’t end there.
A long list of video-manipulations and jokes followed but things seemed to have settled when Degeneres decided to get back in the fray. Watch the video below for the full prank war history (a lot of it, anyway).
Now that the war is almost definitely back on, how will Lauer get his revenge?