Harry Styles Pulls A Prank On ‘The Ellen Show’ But Not Everything Goes His Way: ‘An Instant Classic’

Harry Styles is the kind of entertainer who does his best to give his audience what they want, even if that’s just a good laugh. The One Direction singer, who hosted Saturday Night Live in November, is set to appear on The Ellen Show on Wednesday and had been assigned a hidden camera prank by the comedic host during his visit which had been pretaped.

To pull that off, Ellen DeGeneres apparently told Harry that all he had to do was channel her hilarity. That way, he would earn a raucous guffaw with a whole lot of help directly being sent his way from the veteran funny lady.

The 25-year-old Brit was placed in a dressing room while Ellen gave him directions about what to do by speaking into his ear. He then did his best to repeat her words in a convincing way to a guy who had joined Harry for pizza and a chat. For the interaction, which was shown in a split-screen via a video on Instagram, she did the talking from her regular seat on a stage in front of the studio audience while her counterpart did his thing from a comfy couch.

As Harry mimicked Ellen, he rocked tan pants paired with an acid green sweatshirt emblazoned with the saying, “Stay away from toxic people.” That aspect of the interaction made the joke to come even more effective than if he had been wearing, say, a black suit.

Initially, Ellen’s guest gave an admirable performance while regurgitating whatever she uttered. In fact, he seemed to sense what her words were even before she finished saying what he was then told to say. However, after declaring to the guy sitting next to him that he had heard “the most interesting fact about cheese,” what happened next didn’t seem to further Harry’s prank in the way in which he envisioned.

After stating what Ellen said about how he had learned interesting information about a cheese fact really worth, well, repeating, Harry’s earpiece went silent. That’s because his motivator simply stopped talking and started laughing.

To recover and not look too silly, the superstar singer fidgeted as he waited to come up with the words that were to be said next from Ellen. He even put his hand on his head as if to show he was thinking while being perplexed.

“Where was my cheese fact?” he murmured, a question that was followed by even more laughter from Ellen, the audience, and his pizza-eating companion.

Suddenly, it dawned on Harry that the joke was on him.

“Why do you always do this?” he asked Ellen, as the clip and the laughter — which had grown even louder as Harry realized he had been pranked while trying to pull off a prank — came to a close.

The Ellen Show‘s Harry Styles hidden camera segment video on Instagram earned plenty of attention from the television program’s platform’s 80.8 million followers. Within less than half an hour of going live, the split-screen social media video earned more than 43,000 likes and 700-plus comments.

Many used emoji — including the symbols for clapping hands, fire, crying-laughing faces, and crazy faces — to offer fan reactions to Harry’s humorous assignment from Ellen, while hundreds of others used their words to say how they felt about the prank that The Ellen Show called “an instant classic” in their caption.

“This is hilarious, we love you Harry,” stated one admirer, who added a double pink heart emoji to the comment.

“I am crying,” remarked a second fan.

“I dont know what is funnier watching you Ellen or watching him play this off!!!” exclaimed a third Instagram user, who added three crying-laughing emoji.

“I can see why y’all love him,” gushed a fourth fan, who added a crying-laughing face emoji and a red heart-eye face emoji.