Ylvis in America

During the summer and fall of 2015, Ylvis worked on a pilot for American TV called *Ylvis in America.* It

had not been picked up by any U.S. networks by the time *I Kveld Med Ylvis* Season Five premiered in January 2016.

The pilot was produced by Dakota Films in Los Angeles. *(source) **\*\*NOTE:** As of 1 February 2016, the video of Ylvis in America is no longer posted on Dakota Films website. It is still available online - if you know where to look.*

The pilot presented a fictionalized version of Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker two years after *The Fox* went viral. They stayed in Hollywood trying to capitalize on their overnight fame but failed. They are down to their last sponsor, Olsen's Fish Company, and are ordered by their manager to drive to Flagstaff, Arizona to meet his son Magnus and get their custom Foxmobile refitted with a salmon on the roof.

Ylvis drive on to Massachusetts with Magnus, where they've been given an opportunity to write a promotional song for the state's tourist board. However, during their crash course in Massachusetts culture they get very drunk on a brewery tour, behave obnoxiously in a local museum and leave themselves only one day to finish their song. They finish it, but the tourist board hates it.

## Vegard says it wasn't really a pilot

In August 2015, fan blog Ylvis Suomi asked Vegard what Ylvis had been working on in Los Angeles and he had this to say:

***[YS] Is there anything you can tell me about what you’re doing in LA?***

*[V] Not very much. We’re just experimenting with stuff. Some people said it was a pilot. It’s not a pilot. We’re trying out stuff. A lot of things won’t work, so people will never see these things. The only thing that is to tell there is that we are in collaboration with Lionsgate and trying to find out if we can do something. We’re kind of comfortable in Norway, so we don’t want to rush over to America just to do something in America. It would be cool to do stuff in America, but we don’t do things because it’s cool to be in America. We just want to do things that are fun and if we can do that over there, that’s cool.*

***I think even the Americans are worried that you’ll do something really American there, not like what you normally do.***

*I think so too. The American way of working is very different from here. One should not underestimate the cultural differences between the strange country of America and the rest of the world.*

***But it’s probably getting more difficult to do pranks and stuff here in Norway, when everybody knows you.***

*Yeah, sure. We just have to find out first of all what they want over there. What can we make that is funny over there and what can we do there that we can’t do here? But we’re really relaxed about it and we have our stuff back here [in Norway]. That’s our main hub.*

## Bård interview on *Senere med Tørnquist*

Bård Ylvisåker was a guest on Einar Tørnquist's talk show *Senere med Tørnquist* on 3 February 2017. When Einar asked him what had happened to their American project, Bård confessed that it had mostly been an exercise in frustration and the resulting pilot was one of the worst things they'd ever done. In the end, it had simply been easier to make something so bad that no one would want to buy it and be free of the contract. When another host asked if Bård was admitting they had made a terrible pilot on purpose, Bård would not confirm but replied "you are free to interpret it."