John Silver – “Here’s Why Griff Garrison Is A Weirdo”
John Silver has recalled the origins of Being The Elite’s ‘Who the f**k is Griff Garrison’ skit and explained the hilarious reason why he thinks the Varsity Blonds member is “a weirdo” because of it!
During a recent AdFreeShows Q&A session, Inside The Ropes’ own Innes McVey spoke to John and asked where the now-infamous line came from and if there are any other Being The Elite skits he has particularly fond memories of.
The Dark Order member explained that whilst most of the show’s lines are improvised on the spot, ‘Who the f**k is Griff Garrison’ was one of the rare few that wasn’t – already being in his head beforehand.
“Right off the bat, I’m not sure. Most of it is pretty much improv. It’s usually ‘Hey, this is the gist of it… and go.’ So most of it is improv. The only thing, actually, is ‘Who the f**k is Griff Garrison?’ as a sentence was not improv, I had that in my head. For some reason, I had that in my head ready to go. I don’t know why but I remember pitching it to him.”
Silver went on to teasingly call Garrison a weirdo and recalled how his unexpectedly deadpan reaction to the line made him seem like a serial killer in the making!
“So this is why I think Griff Garrison is a weirdo [laughs], I’m switching this. Because I pitched it to him and he was just like ‘…Yeah. OK.’ So I’m like ‘All right, so we’re gonna do this.’ So we film this bit and even during it, we’re all laughing. After, we’re all hysterically laughing. The only person not laughing after and before was Griff Garrison.
I mean, I was in the bit and I’m off camera trying to not laugh and he’s just stone-faced! Then after we’re done, he just walks away like nothing happened. I’m like ‘Yo, Griff Garrison might be a serial killer because he didn’t laugh at any of this.’ Brodie was laughing, I was laughing, Alex [Reynolds] was laughing, we were all hysterical. So if he becomes a serial killer, I called it right here! …Which would be pretty weird.”
Elaborating further on the improv of Being The Elite, the 29-year-old discussed how he and the rest of The Dark Order manage to grow one small idea into an entire skit for the show without much, if any, scripting.
“But pretty much everything you do is very much improv because that’s just how it works. Sometimes I’ll just have a phrase in my head and then I might use that but for the most part, it’s like ‘Hey, what are we doing this week? Well, we’re having a slumber party. All right, what’s going to happen at the slumber party?’ We might have like an end to it so we don’t just keep on rambling but for the most part, we just go and we start doing whatever. So pretty much the whole thing is improv, there’s not a lot of script going into it.”
During the same Q&A session, Silver also revealed who he believes could be AEW Dark’s next breakout star!
Thanks to AdFreeShows for facilitating our chat with John Silver! You can join their Q&A sessions yourself by heading over to their Patreon and pledging at the ‘Top Guy’ tier!