Ben Affleck‘s Dunkin ad starring Jeremy Strong and Casey Affleck was certainly one of the biggest surprises to come out of Super Bowl Sunday. But the Succession star revealed the grotesque concept for the commercial was entirely his idea!
The commercial starred Strong as himself, playing a dramatic method actor who dunks himself in a branded Dunkin’ drum full of wet coffee grounds as he prepares to film Ben’s commercial.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Strong said Ben had originally approached him with a very different idea that paid homage to his character on Succession. “I read it and it had me in a tracksuit coming out at the very end and doing a rap — like Kendall’s rap — to the other coffee brands. I said, ‘I can’t do that,’” Strong revealed.
The actor was instead inspired by Martin Sheen rising from the mud in Apocalypse Now, adding that they debated between going “highbrow” and using tea instead before settling on coffee.
“I just went overboard with the idea, and Ben was absolutely amazing and wonderful and receptive to all of it,” he said.
“God knows what the coffee sludge was made from,” he said. “They prepared it in a way that I didn’t have to get in it. But of course, I did anyway. It’s all really silly. The world is so dark now, and the work that I’ve been doing for a long time has weighed so heavily on me, it was nice to have a little burst of levity.”
In an interview with Variety, Strong also explained that it felt important to take the commercial in a different direction because he was not interested in “rehashing” what he already accomplished on Succession.
“I want to put distance between myself and that show and achieve escape velocity,” he admitted.
The commercial was a direct response to the criticism Strong faced for his method acting, much of which came from his Succession co-star Brian Cox, who has called it “fucking annoying,” amongst other things.
Strong responded to the criticisms once and for all in Variety. “I had no trouble taking the piss out of myself,” he said. “I’ve been accused of being this incredibly self-serious, pretentious person. And I do take my work extremely seriously. If you give me a piece of material, I won’t let anything stand between me and what I think I need to do to serve it.”
He added, “But I thought it’d be good to have a laugh at this idea of being a method actor, because I’ve never called myself a method actor, and I’m not a method actor. It’s all about imagination and commitment.”
Scroll up to watch the Dunkin’ commercial in full.
The post Jeremy Strong Says It Was His Idea To Bathe In Coffee For His Bizarre Dunkin’ Ad With Ben Affleck: “I Just Went Overboard” appeared first on Decider.
