Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: Al Roker Speaks out About Butter Man After Twitter Fan Fires off Response

After Al Roker was interrupted not once, but twice by a life-size stick of butter during Macy's [...]

By Libby Birk

After Al Roker was interrupted not once, but twice by a life-size stick of butter during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Today show co-anchor jokingly responded to a tweet from an Twitter account for the 30 Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree writing that it "paid the stick of butter to annoy [Al Roker] on TV."

"I am coming for you, thank you very mulch," Roker responded with his best tree pun.

But the holiday tree wasn't impressed, and shot back, "Your dad jokes could use some sprucing up."

Roker was full of butter puns during the parade on Thanksgiving when the butter kept getting into Roker's shot. During their first encounter, Roker attempted to evade the butter with a playful shove, telling him, "I hate to butter you up, but you've got to move on."

The second time around, the dairy product caught up to Roker, who was riding in a motorcycle sidecar, and yelled, "We're buttering you up! Butter your turkey, butter your ham!" to which Roker deadpanned to the camera, "And that's why everybody loves clowns."

The moment was instantly iconic on social media, with tons of Twitter users reacting to the fun encounter. Even the butter himself, a pastor from Westchester County, New York named Donny Willis, spoke out about it, telling Variety that he didn't set out to interrupt Roker's segments.

"I had no idea that this was going to be a thing," he said. "At all."

Willis, who was acting in a volunteer capacity as one of Macy's "Breakfast Clowns" in the parade, also shared a full explanation of "the #butter story" on Twitter. He wrote that when he reached Columbus Circle, someone yelled to him, and when he turned around, he saw Roker and a film crew.

He added that Macy's "encouraged the clowns" to run in the streets to "incorporate a personal touch with the audience," which is how he came upon the host a second time.

"This however, put me behind with my group and I was not supposed to get behind...So I had to sprint to catch up. As I was sprinting I quickly ran up on Al Roker again," he explained. "It was not my intention to get in front of the camera again."

"I was simply the guy dressed like a stick of butter with the goal of making people who had been standing on the street since 5 a.m. smile and be happy that they came to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade," he wrote. "It was an honor to play a part in the Al Roker/Butterman encounter."

Speaking to Today on Friday, Roker said that he "had no enmity" against Willis and described the situation as "the goofiest thing."

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