Jeremy Strong Bathed in Coffee of His Own Accord

This was not an accident. Jeremy Strong poked his head out of a vat of coffee beans during a Dunkin’ Super Bowl commercial because he wanted to. In fact, he came up with the idea. Ben Affleck’s latest Super Bowl Dunkin’ commercial featured him, his brother, and a group of Starbucks stand-ins, but his fellow Bostonian Strong stole the show by playing himself as an actor literally “immersing” himself in coffee to understand his commercial better. It was a shockingly strange image to see in the middle of America’s most-watched event, which means it shouldn’t be a surprise that Strong himself came up with the idea. “I got a call saying that Ben Affleck was doing this Dunkin’ commercial, and would I consider doing it?” Strong told Vanity Fair. “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.’”

Instead, he got inspired by Marty Sheen in Apocalypse Now. “I just went overboard with the idea, and Ben was absolutely amazing and wonderful and receptive to all of it,” Strong said. “I would never want to do a commercial unless I could do it on my own terms, unless it could be genuinely funny and creative.” Mission accomplished, but we might add a few more adjectives in there too: gross, unsettling, and nightmarish, for example.

• [Vanity Fair]

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