It was a flamin’ prank!
The wildly popular “Twerk Fail” video — which features a dancing girl on fire — was actually a genius hoax orchestrated by Jimmy Kimmel, the TV host revealed on his show Monday night.
“To you conspiracy theorists who thought the video was a fake: You’re right — we actually just made it up,” he admitted with a grin.
The fake candid video shows a college-aged girl falling onto a table of candles while practicing a handstand twerk, the dance move Miley Cyrus made infamous at this year’s Video Music Awards.
The girl clumsily crushed the coffee table and lit herself on fire — an apparent blooper that earned a whopping 9 million views on Youtube.
But the whole thing was actually just an elaborate internet prank staged by Kimmel, he revealed during an interview with the pretend twerking victim on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
On the show, Kimmel first asked twerking girl “Caitlin Heller” how her burnt yoga pants are doing — then played a “directors cut” of the video for the audience.
In the new video, Kimmel is shown busting into the girl’s room with a fire extinguisher at the end.
He then reveals the twerker is actually Daphne Avalon, a Hollywood stunt-woman, Kimmel admitted.
The original video went viral completely on its own, Kimmel claimed.
“We shot the video about two months ago…We put it up and didn’t send it to any TV station. I didn’t tweet it, we didn’t put it on any websites,” he said,
“We just put it up on YouTube and let the magic happen,” Kimmel said.
Avalon had been instructed to refuse interview requests in order to keep the hoax going — but that didn’t stop news anchors across the country from broadcasting the video.
Avalon got a flood of messages on social media about the video, dubbed “Worst Twerk Fail EVER,” she said.
“I got numerous Facebook [messages] and texts …”she said.
Others thought the video was too good to be true, claiming nobody would light candles before a twerk-fest.
The video earned the most Youtube views last week — which Kimmel joked was all part of an effort to stop the tacky booty-shaking.
“Thank you for helping us deceive the world and hopefully put an end to twerking forever,” Kimmel told Avalon.