Chet Hanks confronts Eric André on ComplexCon floor, reopening a three-year feud

The exchange started with a shoulder tap and a smile, and ended with Andre walking off and Hanks laughing with the people around him

Three years after trading insults with comedian Eric André online, Chet Hanks found him in person. It happened over the weekend on the floor of ComplexCon. Hanks came up behind André, took him by the shoulder and turned him around. Less than a minute later André was walking away, shouting something about Tom Hanks. Hanks posted the video to Instagram on Monday.

The two have been at odds since March 2023. André said then that Hanks had endangered the crew during a taping of his Adult Swim show. Hanks denied it and answered with insults of his own. Now he says André gave him a new reason for the bad blood. It was, by Hanks’s account, a Jamaican accent he used years ago. Nothing on the video backs that up, and André has said nothing publicly.

No one was hurt, and no police report has been linked to the encounter.

How the Confrontation Played Out

André was smiling when he turned around. A hand had landed on his shoulder in a packed aisle of the convention. Behind him stood Hanks, 36, in a black Los Angeles cap and denim shorts. The smile did not last. Within seconds the two were face to face, and André, 43, looked confused.

Much of what Hanks said was lost to the noise of the crowd. André’s reply was not. “What are you talking about?” he asked, loud enough for the phone to catch it. By then the people traveling with the comedian had closed in. One of them appeared to tell whoever was filming to put the camera away.

Midway through, the men gripped hands and kept talking, standing close. Then André shrugged, turned and headed off through the crowd with his group around him. He shouted once more on the way out, and Tom Hanks’s name was in it. What else he said is unclear on the recording. The elder Hanks has not commented.

Hanks did not follow him. The camera stayed on him as he laughed with the people standing nearby. He seemed to tell them the meeting had been “a long time coming,” though that line is unconfirmed. About 46 seconds after the shoulder tap, the video ends.

Defending Caribbean Culture

Hanks gave his version of the conversation in the caption he posted with the video. He wrote that he “finally ran into” André, who he said travels with four security guards. The guards were there, Hanks claimed, because the convention makes André uneasy. He also said André had “NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER” of criticizing him to the media in 2023.

That changed, Hanks wrote, once André was back among his security team. Only then, he said, did the comedian explain himself. The complaint was that Hanks had been “mocking Caribbean culture” with a Jamaican accent years earlier. Hanks did not take it seriously. His caption called André “a passionate cultural activist” better known for “brain rot and poop joke humor.”

None of that can be heard on the recording. The audio carries no mention of an accent or of Caribbean culture. Nor is André heard saying he had forgotten what he said in 2023. Several people do leave with him, but the video shows neither how many nor why. Whether they were hired guards or convention escorts is not clear.

The accent was also absent from André’s complaints three years ago. Back then he talked about a motorcycle, saying Hanks rode one around the set. Crew members were nearly knocked off their ladders, he said, calling it “very dangerous.” Hanks’s answer at the time was that the dirt bike had been brought in for a stunt. As of Tuesday night, André had not responded to the caption.

Feud Began in 2023 With André’s Claim That Hanks “Broke Our Crew”

The quarrel started in March 2023, weeks before the sixth season of “The Eric Andre Show.” Asked about his guests, André singled out Hanks. He said Hanks “broke our crew” and compared the taping to “Rust.” That was the film set where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot. André also called Hanks “emotionally disturbed” and compared him unfavorably with his half-brother, actor Colin Hanks.

Hanks answered the next day on Instagram. He said he took the show’s chaos as trolling and decided to “match that energy.” By his account, he rode a dirt bike on set, was told to stop and put it down. He admitted only that he “popped a little wheelie.” He then accused André of resenting a guest who had upstaged him, and added several insults.

André called every word of that a lie and dared Hanks to take a DNA test. He doubted aloud that Tom Hanks was really his father. That June he went further, asking for a birth certificate and inviting Hanks to say it to his face. Seen that way, the shoulder tap at ComplexCon was Hanks accepting an invitation André issued himself.

X Meets Chet Hanks with Jokes and Mockery

On X, the popular sentiment was “Who the […] is chet hanks,” with more than 2,100 likes. That reply set a visible pattern: a large share of engagement treated Hanks as the lesser-known party and Andre as the familiar one.

Replies under the post leaned against the approach. One user wrote that Hanks was “lame” and that Andre is “the chillest person on earth.” Another wrote, “What an […]. Andre tried to be cool with him too.” A third called Hanks “as lame as they come” and the security “as weak as they come.” One referred to Hanks as a “random nepo coke head.” Another posted, “How is your opp happy to see you man pls stop this,” pointing at Andre’s initial smile. One user said Andre had once hitchhiked in their car and was “super chill.” Those replies treat the smile-then-confusion sequence as evidence that Andre was not looking for the argument.

Other posts were more observational. One recounted the shoulder grab, the “NO MEMORY” claim and the Tom Hanks shout, then called it “nepo baby drama.” Another called the confrontation a “chaotic crossover” and said culture was “healing from boring celebrity PR.” A separate post summarized the 2023 dirt-bike dispute, Andre’s “[…]” insult from Hanks, the DNA-test reply and Andre’s later “say that to my face” challenge, then wrote that ComplexCon looked like Hanks taking the challenge. That post drew about 1.33 million views and 5,500 likes.

Overall sentiment was mockery more than outrage. The largest responses did not know Hanks or did not consider him to be a major player. Another large group of people sided with Andre and read the approach as one-sided. Then there were some who treated the whole exchange as entertainment and as the logical end of Andre’s 2023 dare.

Debuting the Jamaican Accent at the 2020 Golden Globes

The accent has its own history, and it predates the show. Hanks first used Jamaican patois on the red carpet at the 2020 Golden Globes. His father was being honored that night. He kept it up in videos and in “White Boy Summer,” a 2021 song that borrows from dancehall. Critics called it appropriation.

Hanks never accepted that charge. He once likened the patois to picking up an English accent from gangster films. In 2024 he condemned far-right groups that had adopted “White Boy Summer” as a slogan. The song, he said, was meant to be playful. His caption this week follows the same line, treating the objection as a joke.

What the record lacks is any sign André cared about the accent before now. His only later comment on the feud came in early 2024. He said then that he thought Hanks was “legitimately mad” but could not remember why. That is close to the memory lapse Hanks describes. It is not the same as forgetting the 2023 interview itself.

Final Thought

For now the public record is thin. It consists of one short video, one caption and a shout nobody can quote with confidence. The older dispute is better documented, but it concerns a different subject. Hanks says the accent was the real grievance all along. Only André can say whether he told him so, and he has not.

The stakes are reputational rather than legal. No complaint has been filed, and neither man has lost work over the encounter. André has a history of answering Hanks quickly and sharply. If he does so again, the argument will likely move back online, where it began. If he stays quiet, Hanks’s version will stand as the only account of what was said.

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