Jimmy Kimmel Character Dupes News Outlets With Absurd Propofol Celebration At Conrad Murray Trial

Jimmy Kimmel Live! scored a bit of a coup last night with a Herman Cain interview just hours after a fourth woman came forward and accused the GOP candidate of sexual harassment. But Kimmel’s biggest accomplishment of the day may have been inadvertently duping some news outlets into believing that a character on his show, Jake Byrd (played by actor Anthony Barbieri) — who was pretending to be an over-the-top Michael Jackson fan gathered for the verdict — was an actual Jackson fan celebrating the victory in a questionable manner.

Byrd had a bottle labeled “propofol” (the drug that contributed to Jackson’s death) that he chugged in celebration when Conrad Murray was declared guilty. A Reuters photographer snapped the shot, labeled it as a fan drinking fake propofol at the reading of the guilty verdict, and it was picked up by several news outlets, including Yahoo, the AFP, the New York Post, and the International Business Times.

Byrd is famous among Kimmel fans for getting in the background — and sometimes foreground — of news reports and press conferences. This may be the first time he made the lead photos for major news outlets while posing as a super-fan.

During Kimmel’s show on Monday, he presented one final Jake Byrd video from the trial celebration — the one in which the fake propofol was chugged and the photo was taken. Enjoy the clip below, courtesy of ABC:

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