The Rundown: Samuel L. Jackson’s British Bread Commercial Is The Best Kind Of Celebrity Endorsement

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

Celebrity endorsements are tricky business. There’s a fine line one has to tippy-toe across. When done right, when the combination of celebrity and product and delivery works, it can be a hoot. Everyone’s having fun and also helping the economy. Good. Great, even. Danny DeVito seems like he’s having a blast telling everyone about Jersey Mike’s subs. But when it doesn’t click… yeesh. It feels a little sad and sometimes gross and most of the time it’s just a bummer. For everyone, too. The viewer, the celebrity, and the people trying to sell a product. No thank you.

We saw both ends of that spectrum on display this week. The good was, well, really good, and if you haven’t seen Samuel L. Jackson trading on years of playing movie badasses to sell bread for a British bakery then, buddy, please click play on this sucker and treat yourself. The next paragraph can wait. Watch it again even if you saw it earlier in the week. Just promise to scroll all the way to the bottom of this column when you’re done so I can tell you about the bears that hijacked a Krispy Kreme truck. That’s the deal.

See Delightful. Wonderful, even. And then if you, like me, started Googling when you finished it, you discovered that the company behind it all, Warburton’s, has a history of doing it. They kind of love it. The CEO gets it. Look at this guy talk about Samuel L. Jackson.

‘Not many people can be that commanding and so charming at the same time, and I love his hilarious take on why our Toastie loaf is the real deal.’

He wasn’t done, either.

He continued: ‘Inviting the big-screen hero of Samuel L. Jackson into the business was a uniquely memorable experience, and we hope to bring some light-hearted humour to viewers at home – while reminding the nation that our Toastie truly offers our customers the best of the best.’

Nailed it, straight through. I kind of want to try this stuff now even though I live a whole ocean away and baked goods are not famous for their extended shelf life. Which, I suppose, is the whole point. Mission accomplished.

Which brings us to… well, this.

Robert De Niro will reportedly reprise his iconic “Taxi Driver” role as Travis Bickle in an upcoming Uber ad campaign.

I do not love this. Especially when you get to this part of the article.

The Oscar-winner has recently taken on several other ad campaigns — a possible consequence of the star’s costly divorces and separations from the mothers of his seven children.

“A lot of people feel like some of these classic films are his best work, and signing up to commercials is selling out a bit, but obviously he’s had a very expensive personal life,” the source said.

This is what I mean about it all being tricky. Both guys are using an image created by their acting career to sell a product. Both guys are, one assumes, getting a decent paycheck to do it. Maybe the biggest thing is the product, actually. It’s easy to root for a British company that makes silly ads about bread. It’s less easy to root for a huge Silicon Valley unicorn (who many believe to be shady at best and evil at worst) convincing an aging actor to reprise an iconic role from like 40-50 years ago. I promise I thought that before I saw this quote from Samuel L. Jackson about the bread commercial.

About working on his latest ad, the Hollywood legend said: ‘It was a pleasure to meet the man at the helm of Britain’s biggest family bakery. And what an honour to follow in the footsteps of ‘Bolton alumni’, George Clooney and Robert DeNiro.

Yup, Robert De Niro did an ad from that bakery, too. And yup, it’s lovely, too. Look.

Hmm. I guess it’s all actually not that tricky. Maybe you just need to do commercials for charming bread companies for it all to work. I’m glad we figured this out.

Okay, here’s what happened. Earlier this week, I wrote a thing about how cool it is that Jon Hamm has used the juice he squeezed out of his iconic work as Don Draper on Mad Men to run around doing whatever fun and silly project his heart desired. I pegged it to his appearance in The Morning Show as a goofball techbro and his upcoming role in season five of Fargo, just because that’s what was on my mind at the time. This is how the sausage gets made around here.

But then a cool thing happened. People read the article and started reaching out to tell me their own favorite Hamm appearances. I got tweets reminding me that he voiced a talking toaster on Bob’s Burgers at the height of his Mad Men fame. I had about a dozen people tell me to watch him in Good Omens, where he plays a version of the archangel Gabriel who gets amnesia and starts bumbling around Earth, which is a very Jon Hamm thing. I even got an email from someone who has known him personally for a decade that confirmed he’s just an extremely good dude, which was nice, especially since, as you may know, people on the internet love to tell you when you’re wrong.

My favorite ones, though, were about goofy little commercials he’s been doing in Canada, in part because I was already planning on writing about celebrity endorsements this week and in part because… well.

Hamm did do a series of ads for a Canadian food delivery app called SkipTheDishes where he played a man pretending to be Canadian. “That’s kind of taken off and become its own thing,” Hamm said. “I get recognized in Canada as an honorary Canadian.”

LOOK AT HAMM.

Just a really great experience all around. For me, I mean. Because nobody yelled at me. And everyone said I was right. And I got to watch a lot of fun clips of Jon Hamm. That’s what’s important here.

Good news and bad news.

GOOD: Vanna White is returning to Wheel of Fortune even with Pat Sajak stepping down.

In June, White also closed a new deal to return as host of ABC’s Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which, as Deadline reported at the time, involves a significant salary increase. Her contract extension for the flagship syndicated show is believed to involve a pay raise, too. A fan favorite, White has been revealing letters at Wheel’s signature puzzleboard since 1982. Amid uncertainty over her future beyond Season 41, she enjoyed a wave of support during her contract negotiations, which likely helped seal the deal for her to stay on.

BAD: They still hired Ryan Seacrest to replace Sajak instead of giving the job to Vanna. Or me. Or Joe Pera, And he’s saying stuff like this, which is mostly harmless but still annoying.

He also admitted that one of the game show’s most foundational elements is surprisingly something of an Achilles heel for him.

“Actually, I’m a terrible speller,” he admitted (on the other hand, his mother “thinks she’s a great speller,” he quips).

Seacrest qualifies, “But, on the show I’m better than on my cell phone when I type or text.”

Which I would have more to say about if reading his name didn’t immediately remind me of the time in 2010 when Sylvester Stallone spent a whole week tweeting about how he thought Seacrest could beat up Jet Li.

— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) September 17, 2010

Which… well I guess that’s good news, too. This brings our final score on this section to:

GOOD NEWS — 2

BAD NEWS — 1

A squeaker but still a win.