Hannibal Buress went ahead and created his own moment on the red carpet at the premiere for Spider-Man: Homecoming. The catch is that he was nowhere near the event. Instead, Buress reached out to a “lookalike” on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, offering $500 and presumably a chance to attend the premiere (as THE Hannibal Buress). He even created an email for the occasion as you can see in this screenshot via Entertainment Weekly:
The results were made clear once “Buress” stopped for an interview during the livestream of the event on YouTube. The name might read Hannibal Buress, but it’s pretty clear that everything is a goof once the real Buress tweets out the moment:
https://twitter.com/hannibalburess/status/880244337405296643
https://twitter.com/hannibalburess/status/880253483999473664
According to Entertainment Weekly, the man who took Buress’ place is named Joe Carroll, a “self-described author, screenwriter, director, and actor” from Nashville and is now living in Los Angeles. Carroll documented the experience from his end on his Instagram feed and actually seems to have had a nice time.
EW notes that Sony and Marvel representatives have not provided a comment on the situation yet, but you have to wonder if they really have to. If anything, Buress would know if there could be trouble stemming from the incident and could deal with it as it popped up. It’s certainly not a cause for alarm, even if there’s some stranger playing pretend crashing your event. Just a little harmless fun, some viral promotion, and another fun thing to add to an already weird resume for Buress.
Also, you can’t deny that Joe Carroll can work with the attention he’ll be getting.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)