Kevin Connolly Looks Back at Entourage’s Famed Joshua Tree Episode With Us Weekly
One of Kevin Connolly’s most cherished Entourage memories is the Joshua Tree episode — if you know, you know.
“I often tell people one of my favorite episodes was when we did mushrooms in the desert,” Connolly, 50, told Us Weekly ahead of the show’s 20-year anniversary on Thursday, July 18. “But it was also one of the hardest episodes because it was very, very, very [hot] — it was June and [there] was nowhere to hide.”
Season 5 featured the episode titled “Tree Tippers,” which premiered in October 2008. In this particular installment, Johnny “Drama” (Kevin Dillon) suggests his brother, Vince (Adrian Grenier), and the gang take a trip to Joshua Tree National Park and take magic mushrooms. Taking psychedelics was supposed to assist Vince make a decision about his career. Specifically, he was torn between taking on a guaranteed role in the children’s film Benji or pushing for a role in Smoke Jumpers. Naturally, chaos ensues.
Connolly’s character, Eric, goes full mute while high, for example, and Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) loses track of his dog, Arnold, in the desert. Anyone else vividly remember the stars yelling “Arnold” into the void of Joshua Tree? Because Us has never forgotten it. (The episode featured a cameo by Eric Roberts who supplied the mushrooms and went on the trip with the boys.)
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Connolly recalled getting “burned up” while they filmed in the desert.
“There were no hotels out there. So, they put us all in this [motel]. I remember there was a roach in the bathtub,” he shared. “We took over a motel, and it was fun because we were together. We were all in weird motel rooms.”
Filming the episode was “a good bonding” experience for the show’s stars. The episode also acted as a turning point in Vince’s career, as he decided to pursue a role in the movie Smoke Jumpers (name five of Vinny Chase’s films) after seeing a group of firefighters and hallucinating himself as one of the first responders.
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“That [episode] is very fond [memory], and then the Cannes episode was great,” he told Us. The Entourage season 4 finale, titled “The Cannes Kids,” featured the cast actually filming at the Cannes Film Festival.
“I think you'd have to credit that to the producers but what they pulled off from a production standpoint … that episode was a minor miracle,” Connolly continued. “Just getting us out on the carpet and using the backdrop of the Cannes Film Festival. That was awesome.”
Reporting by Sarah Jones
