One Highly Interesting Thing You Didn't Know About 'Broad City'

Here's the only scene where Hannibal Buress was high on camera.
Comedy Central

Since "Broad City" first aired on Comedy Central in early 2014, you may have wondered if the actors smoke as much weed on set as the characters do on screen. Last year (on 4/20, of course), Digg even made an almost two-minute video featuring short snippets of all the pot that had been featured on the show up to that point.

But according to one of the actors, smoking weed while on the job is a habit only the characters share.

"That's the only time I've ever been high on camera," comedian Hannibal Buress told The Huffington Post, referring to an episode of "Broad City" from the show's first season. The scene Buress is talking about comes from the third episode of the series, "Working Girls," where Ilana (Ilana Glazer) takes on a dog-walking gig with middling success. Early on, Buress essentially realized weed and the show didn't actually go as perfectly together as fans would assume.

Read on if you mariwanna get more details about that time Buress smoked weed before a "Broad City" scene.

Here's the moment where Buress was "high on camera."

The comedian's character, Lincoln, shows up around the 35-second mark screaming, "Oh, my God!"

Then, he becomes fascinated with petting dogs and gives them nicknames like "Dumbface."

According to Buress, smoking "diminished" his acting abilities.

Buress seems to have mentioned this poticular moment only once before. During a Reddit AMA in March 2014, he said, "I was high for one episode. My acting skills were diminished." At the time, Buress didn't answer follow-up questions about which episode he was referring to. Aside from revealing the scene to HuffPost, Buress also elaborated on how his acting suffered.

"The scene required a lot of different things for me to do," he said. To accomplish his part, he had to wait a ways away from where characters Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana were sitting and clock the moment he was supposed to run into the scene. Then once on camera, he had to get excited about the dogs, pet the dogs, pull out his phone and deliver various lines.

"I was stoned, so I was messing that up, man," said Buress. "It was not working out, so that was the first time I ever smoked and went on camera and the last time."

Buress told High Times in 2015 that smoking weed is not typically a part of his creative process, but he has occasionally written jokes while high. "I don’t like it that much when I’m out and about; I like smoking at home," Buress said to the magazine. "I like it to be one of the last things I do that day."

Despite the weed culture of the show, the other actors don't smoke before shooting scenes.

"Nobody smokes there," Buress said with a laugh while on the phone with HuffPost. "I've been on other sets where people smoke or whatever, but no, nobody [smokes weed on the 'Broad City' set]."

Buress said that the cast members of "Broad City" are too focused to be smoking weed before filming. He also clarified that he actually smoked at his own place before the scene, rather than doing so on the actual set.

You can likely get a look at the real-life apartment where Buress smoked in his excellent episode of "High Maintenance," where he played a comedian who becomes depressed after an audience member pulls out a gun and shoots. Parts of the episode were filmed in Buress' apartment at the time and debuted around the same period as the first season of "Broad City."

The actors didn't even need the weed featured in a recent rat-themed episode because the hired rodent was a "chill-ass, regular professional rat."

In the Season 3 episode "Rat Pack," Ilana's apartment is infested with rats. Since she can't afford the extermination bill, she throws a party at her apartment and offers various types of weed to guests for a fee. The opening of the episode shows a rat sneaking up on her during various day-to-day activities, including hooking up with Lincoln, which causes the two characters to scream.

Buress said that, in real life, that rat wasn't actually scary to work with. "It's a trained rat," Buress said with a laugh. "It's not a rat that'd destroy your household. I mean, it's a pet almost." According to Buress, the rat would complete its role in the scene and then get out of the way, just like a typical actor.

"It was fine, man," Buress said. "It was just a chill-ass, regular professional rat."

"Broad City" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on Comedy Central.

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