"SNL" Did The Pepsi Ad From The Director's Point Of View And It Was Brutal

"Don't even touch it."

By
Tom Namako
by Tom Namako

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Earlier this week, Pepsi handed us an ad — starring Kendall Jenner — so disastrously tone-deaf that it managed to unify pretty much everyone in disbelief.

Pepsi

People wanted to know: How the hell did this happen?

Rod @rodimusprime

If Pepsi had one black person on the ad staff. "So then she takes off the wig and gives a Pepsi to the police offi… https://t.co/13EnFjbpgQ

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SNL's Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney had "answers."

NBC

Beckett played the director of the ad in the skit. The whole thing is from his perspective and his side of a series of phone conversations. First he took a phone call from his sister, Carrie, but he couldn't talk long because they were moments from shooting.

NBC

"It was, like, completely my idea, and now they're doing it!" he explains.

"I mean, okay, so, well, it's an homage to the resistance — so there's this huge protest in the street reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. And so, everybody is marching, right? And they can see police officers, 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," he says.

"Isn't that, like, the best ad ever?"

NBC

And then: SILENCE.

We hear only his side of the conversation:

"Uh-huh."

"Sort of tone-deaf?"

"I think maybe you just kind of don't get it," he says. He asks her to put someone named Doug on the phone. And while he's giving his friend the pitch, he stops the director dead in his tracks.

NBC

"No, we're celebrating these cultures. We're celebrating black culture.

"But we're are also celebrating Asian culture.

"Oh.

"Oh. Got it. Just kind of using them?"

Eventually he asks for someone to "put a neighbor on the phone, a black one?"

NBC

"Hi, ma'am. Hey, we're shooting a little Pepsi commercial over here. I want to run it by you, and get your opinion on it. Okay, great. So, the whole thing is sort of an homage to the Black Lives Matter move— Don't even touch it? It would be insane to touch it, right? Okay. Don't even show police?"

NBC

"What would you do if you were in my situation? Just run to my car? Okay."

But it's too late — Jenner, played by Cecily Strong, is already walking out to the set and talking to her friend.

"I stop the police from shooting people by handing them a Pepsi. I know, it's cute, right?"

NBC

Watch the whole skit here:

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