TikToker under fire for trolling Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes stars at premiere

A TikTok prankster is facing backlash for trolling Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes leads Owen Teague and Freya Allan during the film’s red carpet premiere.

TikToker Easton Simpson has built up a following of over 300,000 with his bizarre prank videos, many of which involve him interviewing people and purposefully mumbling.

On May 2, Simpson attended the premiere of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles and spoke with the movie’s actors. Unfortunately for them, they had no idea that a prankster had been invited to the event.

In a couple of videos uploaded on May 7, Simpson revealed he spoke with both Teague and Allan and appeared to act professionally, seemingly trying to ask them legitimate questions before beginning to mumble.

“Acting in this movie is a little bit different because you’re not playing a human. Was there any part of this where you…” the TikToker began before spouting a bunch of gibberish at the confused Teague.

The actor would ask Simpson to repeat the question multiple times only to be given the same nonsensical statement, eventually prompting him to lose it and start making monkey noises as he does in the movie.

The same thing happened when the TikToker interviewed Freya Allan, who just like her co-star, asked him to repeat the question over and over before catching on that the whole thing was just a prank.

“That was evil!” she exclaimed. “I will not forgive you for that. I’m anxious enough as it is.”

While many of Simpson’s followers applauded the interviews and the actors’ responses, not everyone was supportive.

“This is so irritating. There are people who take this seriously and would be honored to interview people like him but instead, this guy gets the job and makes it a mockery and doesn’t take it seriously at all,” one said.

“Cool, let’s prank the talent (who are clearly frustrated with the whole bit) instead of asking them genuine questions about their work,” blasted someone else.

“I would be so stressed if that were me being interviewed. My auditory processing is terrible so I work overtime anyway to understand, this would be my nightmare if someone was doing it on purpose,” remarked another.

Simpson’s rise from interviewing strangers to appearing at red carpet premieres was not lost on his supporters though, who praised the TikToker’s viral content.

“The fact he started with mumbling to strangers just randomly to doing it to celebrities is a crazy achievement,” one of his fans applauded.

As for Owen Teague and Freya Allan, their latest film is shaping up to be a smash hit. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is out now, and we at Dexerto gave it a solid 4/5 in our review.