Kurt Russell had a refreshingly honest reason for saying yes to a Super Bowl commercial this year: he was trying to keep pace with his dog.
The actor stars alongside Lewis Pullman in a new Michelob ULTRA spot that aired during Super Bowl LX, but Russell admits the real motivation came from his family’s Labrador retriever, Roy, who previously stole the spotlight in a Budweiser campaign.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Russell explained that the commercial felt like a chance to level the playing field at home. “Roy, our Lab that I got gold for Goldie, he became the Budweiser dog,” Russell said. “He went in on a cattle call, and they picked him, and I think there was a large audience for that! So I looked at this as an opportunity to maybe catch up with my dog. Who knows? Maybe this will be a really big audience!”
Russell added that Budweiser had no idea Roy belonged to him and Goldie Hawn when the dog was cast. “Kate [Hudson, Goldie’s daughter] did a little video last year of the commercial when it came on, and that went viral because Anheuser-Busch had no idea that [Roy] was a dog that was Goldie’s and mine,” he said. “They got more mileage outta that than they did the commercial, I was told by the Buschs!”
The actor hadn’t met Lewis Pullman before filming the Joseph Kosinski-directed ULTRA ad, but the connection came through family. Russell’s son Wyatt Russell had previously worked with Pullman on Thunderbolts / New Avengers and gave his dad an enthusiastic heads-up. “Wyatt told me, ‘Who’s going to play the student, as it were?’ And I said, ‘Lewis Pullman,’” Russell recalled. “‘Do you know Lewis!?’ And I said, ‘No.’ [He said,] ‘Aww, he’s a great guy. You’re going to have a blast.’ … And he was right.”
The Russell-Hawn household famously treated Roy’s Budweiser moment like a championship win. In a video shared by Kate Hudson, Russell can be heard cheering, “Good boy, Roy! You just were in front of more people than any actor in this family has ever been in front of at one time!” Hudson later joked in the caption, “There’s a lot of thespians in this family, but tonight there was only one star.”
Goldie Hawn echoed the sentiment in her own post, writing, “Don’t get me wrong, I love watching football, but tonight was all about watching our dog Roy Hawn Russell star in his first Super Bowl commercial for @budweiserusa!!!”
This year, Russell finally got his shot to follow that act, proving that in Hollywood, even Super Bowl ads can become a friendly family competition.
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