Jim Carrey has usually been associated with his idiosyncratic roles, and often categorised as a powerful, eccentric actor.

However, a new side to Carrey was on view when the actor went on an existential, borderline nihilistic, rant at a seemingly unlikely venue – the Harper’s Bazaar party during the New York Fashion Week.

E! News reporter Catt Stradler was surprised to find Carrey on the red carpet, and went up to him for an interview. The actor circled around her oddly before telling her, “There’s no meaning to any of this. I wanted to find the most meaningless thing that I could come to and join, and here I am. I mean, you gotta admit it’s completely meaningless.”

Stradler, visibly thrown off track, tried to bring the conversation back to the “icons” that the party was celebrating, to which Carrey promptly responded, “I don’t believe in icons. I don’t believe in personalities...I believe that we’re a field of energy dancing for itself. And I really don’t care.”

The awkward, yet surprisingly articulate interview, lasted a little longer than two minutes, and ended with Carrey telling an increasingly uncomfortable and bewildered Stadler, “There is no me. There’s just things happening and there’s clusters of tetrahedrons moving around together...It’s not our world. We don’t matter.”

The interview (above) went viral for Carrey’s absurd existentialism, yet it wasn’t a one-off interview. A few days later, a reporter at W Magazine had a similar experience as Carrey told him, “We’re a bunch of ideas cobbled together to look like a form. There’s a body and there’s a mind, but the body is part of the field of consciousness, just dancing for itself and it’s no different than a plant or a chair or your phone – it’s all one thing” and advised him to “step into the river of tears and sorrows of your life.”

Maybe, just maybe, Carrey was pranking everyone.