“SNL” took on Kendall Jenner’s universally panned Pepsi ad, with Beck Bennett playing the director who thought of the idea trying to find someone to tell him shooting it wasn’t a bad idea.
The mock behind-the-scenes sketch found Bennett on set of the ad, talking to someone on the phone and explaining the idea for Pepsi’s ad.
In between takes in the sketch, Bennett tries to explain his idea for the ad to people on the phone.
“I’m on the set of a huge Pepsi commercial I’m doing,” Bennett explained over the phone. “This is, like, completely my idea, and now they’re doing it. Okay, so it’s an homage to the resistance and for the huge protests in the streets reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. And so, everybody is marching, and they can see police right? And they think it’s gonna go bad because there’s kind of, like, a standoff. And then Kendall Jenner walks in, and she walks up to one of the police officers, and she hands him a Pepsi. And then, that Pepsi brings everybody together. Isn’t that, like, the best ad ever?”
As Bennett finished his description, his face fell — as presumably he was told the ad is a terrible idea.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” he responded to the person on the other end of the phone. “Sort of tone deaf.”
The real-life advertisement that aired this week was pulled after it received widespread scorn for invoking nationwide issues like Black Live Matter to sell soda.
Bennett attempted to salvage the situation, asking the other person on the call to keep finding other people to poll about the ad. Each time, he got everything but the response he wanted.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” Bennett responded after trying to explain the ad. “No, we’re celebrating these cultures. We’re celebrating black culture. But we’re are also celebrating Asian culture.”
As the other side of the conversation, Bennett returned, “Oh. Got it. Just kind of using them?”
Bennett asked for the person on the phone to put another person on the phone — the person’s black neighbor — but the responses didn’t get any better.
“What would you do if you were in my situation?” he asked. “Just run to my car? Okay.”
Disheartened, Bennett tried to get the commercial rewritten to save himself from embarrassment, only to hear that the commercial couldn’t be stopped because Kendall Jenner didn’t have time.
The sketch ended with Cecily Strong appearing as Jenner, also on the phone.
“I’m on the set of my Pepsi commercial,” Strong’s Jenner said, explaining the concept. “Um, I stop the police from shooting black people by giving them a Pepsi. I know! It’s cute, right?”