New York Comedy Club Posts Bizarre Explanation for Mark Normand Incident

The viral incident from Mark Normand’s set last night at the New York Comedy Club in Manhattan was staged by the producers of the show, according to a statement put out by the club earlier today — but that’s just the beginning of the weirdness.

The video in question shows a man in a beanie nervously jumping onstage in the middle of Normand’s set before a security guard grabbed the disruptor’s arm and dragged him out of the theater. Moments later, a small group of the show’s producers approached the stage and took the microphone out of Normand’s hands as they instructed him to exit the theater as well. Then, a visibly alarmed woman addressed the confused audience, telling them, “Everything’s fine, we just had a momentary… interruption. Get up, get out (of) the taping, guys, please cut the cameras.”

This afternoon, the New York Comedy Club posted an explanation of the unsettling event on their Instagram page, stating that the disruption was planned by the producers of the show and offering any upset audience members free admission to another comedy night, presumably sans publicity stunts.

Normand also posted his own explanation of last night’s events on his own Instagram in a Story he titled, “The good ole corporate statement from my publicist.” In it, Normand (or Normand’s PR person) wrote, “No one was harmed or injured during my performance last night at New York Comedy Club. The disruption was part of a planned ‘surprise’ activity by show producers, HiHi (instagram.com/Hi_Hi). I had no prior knowledge that this was going to happen.” As it turned out, that “surprise” was just a wanna-be influencer hopping onstage and bringing the comedy night to an awkward halt.

The Instagram page named by Normand and New York Comedy Club as the perpetrators of the stunt further confuses the narrative of last night. HiHi posted a series of Stories showing different camera angles and reactions to the stage-stormer, and their posts are a mishmash of, apparently, lifestyle aspirations and other people’s artwork. Their story highlights show a series of “applicants” answering the question, “How far would you go for a life you’ve always dreamed of?” and more videos on the page seem to suggest that the account was in some way involved in the ”heist” of a pair of custom shoes designed by New York artist Timothy Goodman for an exhibition.

HiHi also posted videos of another recent and unexplained viral incident in New York, in which supermodel Tyra Banks sat courtside at the Brooklyn Nets game on Tuesday night while flanked by two people in furry costumes who appeared to pester her until they were escorted away by Barclays Center security. 

Whether or not HiHi was responsible for the other strange occurrences about which they’ve posted is unclear, but considering their orchestration of last night’s Normand incident, there seems to be an organized group of attention-hungry “influencers” who roped the stand-up into unwittingly supporting their latest bizarre, banal bid for online relevance. Unfortunately for Normand and the NYCC, they may have unknowingly helped start the clock on a bunch of annoying nobodies’ 15 minutes of internet fame.