Joel McHale and Jimmy Fallon swap Bruce Jenner horror stories

By Meredith Blake

Feb. 8, 2013 12 AM PT

Aspiring comedians, consider yourselves warned: Make fun of Bruce Jenner at your own peril.

As both Jimmy Fallon and Joel McHale have learned the hard way, the Olympic decathlete and Kardashian stepdad doesn’t take too kindly to cracks about his frighteningly taut visage.

The subject came up Thursday on “Late Night,” when McHale was discussing a run-in with Kris Jenner earlier in the day backstage at “The View.” She scolded him for running in fear from her family, presumably to avoid awkward encounters with the very people he ridicules so often on “The Soup.”

But the “Community” star stuck up for himself, claiming that he’s “deathly afraid” of Bruce Jenner for a number of reasons. For one thing, there’s Jenner’s prowess with the javelin. There’s also the matter of his face. “He is a very scary-looking human being,” McHale said, speculating that Jenner either was the victim of a gypsy curse or that he’d told his surgeon, “A little off the ears, leave the nose.

Fallon, too, felt the awesome wrath of Jenner this past summer at the London Olympics. Stopping by the NBC commissary to grab a cup of coffee, he spotted Jenner -- not to mention his double-breasted suit, earrings and “Prince Valiant haircut” -- across the room. (“You were like, ‘LaToya!’” McHale joked.)

Fallon, who had recently made a crack about the high recyclable content of Jenner’s face, tried to slip away undetected, but pesky Tom Brokaw foiled his plan by introducing the two men. Much to Fallon’s relief, the meeting was brief and cordial. Just when he thought he’d escaped, Fallon once again ran into Jenner -- this time without Brokaw.

He shook Fallon’s hand and leaned in to whisper a stern warning: “Stop saying [stuff] about my face.”

Fallon claimed that he hasn’t said anything bad about Jenner since the “awful” confrontation (except of course that he just had).

But for his part, McHale refused to be cowed. “You should have said something like, ‘Bye, Lord Voldemort!’”

To be on the safe side, they should probably both steer clear of the NBC commissary for awhile.

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