It takes a certain level of bravery to tell a professional football player about the time you tricked his girlfriend into thinking she ruined somebody’s wedding, so credit to former Punk’d actor and writer Andrew Santino for doing just that on the latest episode of “New Heights.”
Santino, 40, recently told Travis Kelce about the time he got Taylor Swift to believe she accidentally set off a firework that set a boat ablaze during a wedding party.
“You can ask her the truth, but she bought it,” Santino told Kelce, 34, during the Wednesday, April 24, episode of the podcast. “I know she bought it because it was chaotic. I mean, the boat was on fire.”
It sounded like Kelce took the story in stride, laughing at his girlfriend’s expense as Santino broke down how the 2012 episode of MTV’s prank show played out. It began with episode host Justin Bieber inviting Swift, also 34, to his Malibu home to check out his new recording studio and set off fireworks on the beach.
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“Taylor, obviously to her credit, who is always on point, was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do that,’” Santino said. “I wrote this bit … and I said if she doesn’t want to [set off the fireworks], we have to make it so it’s like a button or a thing, where it’s like an accidental, easy, ‘Did you press this?’ or whatever.”
So the show set up a rig with fake buttons that Swift lightly touched while joking around, giving Punk’d an opportunity to shoot the fireworks at a boat conveniently set up offshore, hosting a fake wedding party with Santino posing as the groom.
When the boat caught fire, the show staged an evacuation with Santino, his fake bride and a pastor coming to shore on a dinghy.
“We were like, ‘You ruined our wedding, Taylor Swift,’” Santino recalled. “And my wife, Anne Gregory, was like, ‘Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe this is a sign I shouldn’t marry him.’ And Taylor was like, ‘No, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t know if that’s right.’ It was so good.”
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Though Kelce had a good laugh at the story, saying he would need to “ask Tay about it,” Swift seemed genuinely upset at the time, later saying she was “traumatized and terrified.”
CMT Insider asked Swift in 2012 whether she planned to get revenge on Bieber, now 30, but Swift said she’s “not really that girl.”
“He’s too smart,” she added. “I’d never be able to punk him. Like, he’d figure it out, then turn the tables on me, and then it would be Justin: 2, Taylor: 0.”
