If you thought you saw Rihanna in downtown Ottawa on New Year’s Eve, you were wrong.
Ottawa-based YouTube entertainers posted a video through their channel The Cool Ciyaal, revealing they were responsible for an elaborate celebrity prank, fooling dozens of people into believing Rihanna was in town.
Hodan Hujaleh, a member of the channel, said the prank was inspired by comments on their previous videos.
“One of the members, Ayan Ali, has been getting a lot of comments saying she looks like Rihanna,” Hujaleh said.
She explained the channel had about 1,000 subscribers before the prank, so the group decided to take advantage of their Rihanna look-a-like and make a video which would help the channel reach 2,000 subscribers.
so why is Rihanna in ottawa for NYE???? bunkest city tbh — Sarah Y (@SarahYassiiin) December 31, 2015
As of Jan. 5, the video is at over 58,000 views and the channel is at 4,155 subscribers. Three of The Cool Ciyaal’s members are currently students at Algonquin College.
“In the midst of [the prank] it was crazy, but the aftermath was even crazier,” Hujaleh said. “Twitter started blowing up, Facebook started blowing up. People started sharing some random cell phone footage that someone posted on YouTube.”
She said the group’s channel focuses on comedy and satirizes elements of Somali culture.
“In our culture, we find that it’s more male-dominated in the comedy scene, so we try to kind of break that barrier and show that females and Muslim females are funny as well,” Hujaleh said.
Two weeks of preparation went into the prank, according to Hujaleh. The group reached out to friends to pose as paparazzi, fans, and bodyguards who could crowd around the fake Rihanna and make the hoax more believable.
“We were messaging so many people, as much people as we could, and stressing so much. We thought we would be bailed on or it would fail. But honestly, everything worked out last minute,” she said. “Everybody played their part really well and they were so into character, we couldn’t even believe it.”
RIHANNA WAS AT RIDEAU OK OK
— tar (@tarsmithtysick) December 31, 2015
Hujaleh said the only thing that cost money was renting the Chrysler which drove the group to the Rideau Centre. “Other than that, everyone kind of volunteered,” she said. “They thought it was fun.”
The fake Rihanna started walking from the back parking lot of downtown Chapters and headed through the Bay, then to the Rideau Centre and back to Chapters.
Hujaleh said she recorded the prank on camera as 50 or 60 people crowded around the group.
“In the beginning, we already had a couple people waiting outside the car to kind of hype it up,” she said.
“Once we started walking through the Bay, there was already a couple kids standing there like ‘Oh my God, is that Rihanna? I think that’s her, let’s follow them.’ So they followed us through the Bay, and that kind of helped get everybody else’s attention,” she added.
The group wasn’t out for more than 10 minutes, but if they had stayed any longer, Hujaleh said it might have gotten “crazy.”
“Thank God it didn’t, because we didn’t want security escorting us or anything like that,” she said.
2 EVERYONE that believed I was Rihaana today…Im sorry BUT YOU PLAYED YOURSELF #THECOOLCIYAAL #IMSOSORRY #RIHANNA #OTTAWA #RIDEAU @rihanna
— Ayan Ali♛ (@Ayanfirstqueen) January 1, 2016
Not everyone was convinced that the real Rihanna was in town, however.
“One guy . . . ran outside of Chapters all the way to see if it was actually Rihanna or not. He was like, ‘that’s not Rihanna,’ ” she said. “I was really nervous and just hoping that everything worked out.”
She said the group has big plans for the future.
“Right now we’re just kind of thinking, maybe we might take it to another city or do other pranks now,” she said. “We’re trying to go worldwide.”
