In 2003, Ashton Kutcher, alongside his pal Jason Goldberg, created the MTV hidden camera reality series Punk’d, which became such a hit with the network that it spanned an impressive eight seasons up during its four-year until 2007.
Everyone from Rihanna to Justin Timberlake, Eva Longoria, and Matthew Perry were the butt of the joke as Ashton, who's since stepped away from acting, and his team made a mockery of the world’s biggest superstars, much to the delight of millions of viewers who would tune in each week to see their favorite celebs put in some of the most uncomfortable situations.
When Punk’d was revived in 2012, the hosting duties had moved on from Ashton to a string of celebrity guests, including Justin Bieber, who would take the actor’s position and prank their industry pals — while it was still entertaining, it didn’t feel the same without Ashton fronting the format.
And in 2019, MTV announced its partnership with Quibi to bring Punk’d to the mobile-first media technology platform… but Ashton was not involved in the project, and here’s why.
Ashton Kutcher’s Absence
Punk’d is one of the most memorable and iconic shows on MTV, so when the network announced its third revival of the hidden camera TV show, people were definitely eager to hear what producers had in store for its return.
This time, Punk’d was set to air on the mobile app Quibi, with 20 episodes that would run for 10 minutes in length. Chance The Rapper joined as the host after Ashton announced he was not going to be working with MTV on the reboot.
The That ‘70s Show star made the revelation in June 2019, when he tweeted to his millions of fans, “I have nothing to do with the new punk’d situation. Hope they get it right.”
His words were rather telling. The fact that he “hoped” they get it right could insinuate that Ashton wasn’t happy with the direction of the show in the past — particularly for its 2012 revival when many had complained and said that the show had lost its spark over the years.
And the idea of having celebrity guests such as TikTok star King Bach host the format took away part of why fans loved the show, to begin with.
Ashton’s commentary made Punk’d so funny and entertaining to watch, and his notable absence from 2012 clearly made viewers realize that MTV had taken the series in a new direction.
As the creator of the show, during his time of being involved with Punk’d, Ashton recently said in an interview on Hot Ones that if a celeb ever complained and didn’t want the scene to air on the show, he never went against their wishes.
“We never aired a single episode that a celebrity didn’t sign a waiver to say, ‘It’s OK to air this,’” he shared.
“There were many cases where I was like, ‘Listen, I’ll show you the final cut product — if you don’t like it, if you don’t think it’s funny, we just won’t air it.’
“If a mark caught on to what we were doing, we would hit the eject button and then keep the bit up and try to bring somebody else into the scenario so we didn’t lose the money.”
In other situations, when celebrities were begging to catch on and get the impression they were being pranked by Ashton, the 43-year-old usually always knew how to handle the situation well enough to divert that particular celeb back into thinking the situation was real.
“We’d keep it going on for so long that they’d be like, ‘OK, there’s no way I’m being Punk’d‘ and then you’re right back on,” he said.
“A lot of times, somebody would be like, ‘I’m being Punk’d right now, Ashton come out, I’m being Punk’d‘ and I would just be like, ‘OK everybody back off and chill,'” he added.
Chance the Rapper has since taken over the hosting duties from Ashton on the Quibi platform. The rapper, who has been a longtime fan of the show, was eager to start shooting scenes for the reboot in 2019, having since pranked a string of celebs, including Megan Thee Stallion.
“No one ever figured out that it was Punk'd because when we were shooting it, it wasn't announced yet," Chance told Entertainment Weekly in April 2020.
"The craziest part was me having to come out and be like, 'Ah, I got you.' And they're like, 'Why are you here, Chance?'… Even if they thought that something was up, it wasn't that they thought they were on a prank show, they were just like, 'Whoever I'm dealing with right now is the worst at their job or an assh—.’"
Have you been catching the reboot on Quibi since its return last year?