One of the most memorable episodes of MTV’s Punk’d is the one where Justin Timberlake was tricked into thinking that his home was being repossessed for failure to pay taxes.
Dax Shepard was involved in the prank and talked about it on his recent podcast.
“As Ashton and I became friends, he said, ‘You know, you can’t — if someone gets physical with you — you’re just going to have to take it,’ which weirdly enough … definitely the most famous bit on the show in all the years was the Punk’ing of Justin Timberlake. What made it so viral, I guess, was that he had cried at one point in it,” Shepard explained. “And at the end of that bit, when Ashton comes out and says, ‘You’re on Punk’d’ blah blah blah, and everyone is celebrating … the bit is over, the cameras are off, and [Timberlake] keeps saying, ‘Yeah, man. I was about to f*cking punch you.’ And I was like, ‘Hmm mmm, alright.'”
.@daxshepard1 on the time he almost came to blows with Justin Timberlake on that infamous episode of Punk'd. http://t.co/9gTv1JqVn1 #ETnow
— EntertainmentTonight (@etnow) September 23, 2014
Shepard said that he felt like Timberlake really believed he was in trouble and wasn’t really ever going to punch him because he was so upset and nervous.
Shepard went on to finish his story saying that Timberlake said,
“Dude, I was for real man, I was about to [expletive] punch you out” and he thought, “OK, that’s number two.”
“I’m thinking, how many times can I hear this dude in his golf outfit — he was wearing a golf outfit — tell me he can punch me out before I’m just not going to be able to handle it?” Shepard said.
Before things got too out of hand, Kutcher intervened.
“And God Bless Ashton. He goes, ‘When were you going to punch him? Before or after you were crying,'” Shepard laughed.
Shepard said that while the incident was funny, he thinks it also taught Timberlake a lesson.
After the episode aired, Timberlake admitted that he was high at the time and said that the prank scared him so badly that he stopped using marijuana for several months.
