Andy Samberg and his viral digital shorts are iconic and serve as a major moment in Saturday Night Live history. Over the years, he and The Lonely Island produced hit after hit with hosts and musical guests, including national treasure Paul Rudd. Their digital short, “Everyone’s a Critic,” centered around a scantily clad and absurd painting of Samberg that an art crowd hated. Now, while the image has never been made public, the location of the 2008 portrait just surfaced with Rudd revealing he’s the one who kept it.
The Lonely Island created-short is a little gory and revealing (a safety warning is attached to the video), but the build-up to the haunting portrait is hilarious. On The Lonely Island podcast, the actors spoke about this wild sketch and silly Studio 8H artifact. Rudd also confirmed he’s held onto the piece for all these years and shared his personal saga with it after filming wrapped:
I do have it. You were kind enough to give it to me, I guess as a remembrance of our time together making the digital short. I loved it. I treasured it. I took it back to my house and realized, ‘I don’t want this hanging on any wall.’ So I have it in a closet. It is a disturbing painting.
Frankly, I’m not too shocked that the MCU actor willingly accepted the notorious nude gift. I also love that he realized by committing to the bit, he had to live with this weird piece of SNL memorabilia.
After sharing all that, Rudd said he could reveal some of the choice details made in the painting, but he refrained and kept the description brief. He noted the full-on-Lonely-Island-material qualities of it, and said they could have it back if anyone wanted it:
I could describe it, but that does take some of the mystery away, because it is an actual painting. Let’s just say, Andy’s nude from the waist down, as we know, and he has hot dogs for fingers. And that’s part of it. And I realized, out of context, you hang that on the wall, you have to describe why you have that on your wall, and that’s not a good thing. There you go. If you want it back, just text me.
Truly, the whole saga is as good as Samberg’s recent reprising of ‘Dick in a Box’ with Lady Gaga in my opinion. While the short is very blunt and oddball funny, it still ranks with some of the trio’s best. Somehow, though, I’m more enamored with the aftermath.
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As mentioned, Rudd going through life with this Samberg painting lurking in the shadows is its own meta skit. Now, I have to wonder if one of the trio will take the Death of a Unicorn actor up on his offer to get it back.
This story is also wonderful because it highlights just how far both Samberg and Rudd have come since that 2008 SNL episode, considering they both will be showing up in the 2025 movie guide. The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star is set to appear in the dark comedy, The Roses, while the Clueless actor has A24’s Friendship and the meta-esque Anaconda movie up next. Plus, we also know he’ll be among the cast of Avengers: Doomsday.
However, regardless of Samberg’s or Rudd’s future endeavors, I love to know that the special but weird painting has continued to tie the two together. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if its resting place changes, because that would add another hilarious wrinkle to this already funny story.
