Since both Portlandia and Grimm are filmed in Portland, OR and some of Portlandia’s crew also works on Grimm, Fred Armisen couldn’t resist trying to photobomb the NBC series.
“We did happen to shoot something right down the street from where [‘Grimm’] was shooting,” he explained at today’s TCA Press Tour. “We did this thing where I’m playing one of those pedicab guys. … I had this mustache and this moppy hair. And they were shooting a scene where there was like some conversation — you know when people walk down the street and it looks like a real TV show and they’re wearing suits and stuff — so I thought, this is my opportunity. I want so badly to be an extra on their show.”
“I really did, he added. “Because I like when that happens, if you look really close. So I went and I got my bike, my pedicab, and I just waited for them to say ‘action.’ I actually made my way onto the set — it was like a long street. I was so happy. I was gonna just walk through really nonchalantly. So I waited and I waited and I waited, and then they wouldn’t shoot. This poor guy had to come up to me and say, ‘Yeah, they really want you off the set.’ So that was it. We were close. … I wanted to it to be a situation where people just sort of appeared by mistake in each other’s [shows].”
Season 3 of Portlandia premieres tonight on IFC.
