Ellen DeGeneres and Carrie Underwood go way back.
So, when the daytime talk show host invited the singer to be a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Friday, she took a trip down memory lane. "This is your 10th appearance on the show. It's less than one a year, so we've missed you on a couple shows. But 10 appearances on the show, that's [a big deal]," DeGeneres said. "The first appearance on the show—do you remember it?"
"We were babes—just little babes," Underwood replied. "Right after Idol I was on it."
DeGeneres then showed a picture from the American Idol champ's first appearance on the show. "Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!" Underwood said, embarrassed. "Well...all right!"
"You look beautiful," DeGeneres said, "and I think I've gotten better."
Underwood replied, "I think we both got [better]."
DeGeneres said it was "amazing" how quickly time had passed them by since then. "I feel like I should give you a gift of some sort," she told the singer. "I don't know what it should be, but..." Cue the man who popped out of DeGeneres' side table while wearing Mike Fisher's hockey jersey. The singer, who let out a bloodcurdling scream, shouted, "Ahh! Oh, my gosh! Come on!"
It wasn't the only prank DeGeneres pulled on Underwood.
Earlier in the show, DeGeneres played a new game called "You Must Say" with her first guest, Seth Rogen. "I don't know why I'm doing this," she admitted. "You're going to tell me a phrase or a sentence or whatever that I have to say to Carrie Underwood. She's on later. She can't hear this right now. We have her sequestered somewhere. So, tell me what I need to say to her and I'll get it in the interview." Rogen said he'd "been thinking about it" for a while, because he wasn't sure whether to "humiliate" DeGeneres or Underwood. "An even split is ideal," he said. "I don't know her at all—she seems totally lovely—but I want to see if you can get her to do something physically. My instinct was for you to say, 'Now I hear you're great at the chicken dance. We have no music, but now's the time to show us.' Because I want to see if she does it."
"This is starting off with a big challenge. You've set the bar high. I thought you were just going to say a weird phrase or something," the host said. "If I get her to do it, you'll give me—what?"
Rogen replied, "Whatever you want, man!"
Flash forward to later in the episode, when DeGeneres told Underwood, "Everyone's been telling me about this chicken dance that you do. Everyone said you do this amazing chicken dance." Confused, Underwood raised her eyebrows and asked, "I do? I don't do a chicken dance." But the audience cheered her on, and DeGeneres followed through on Rogen's dare. Underwood stood up, saying, "I'm being peer pressured! I don't know! I don't chicken dance."
Underwood made a feeble attempt at the chicken dance, not wanting to be poor sport. Afterward, DeGeneres said, "I don't know why people are talking about that so much, but OK!"
To find out if DeGeneres ever let Underwood in on the joke, watch the video.