Tony Hale exclusively spoke to Variety about what it was like to play Beyoncé's assistant in Verizon's Super Bowl 58 commercial.
Before Beyoncé surprised her fans on Super Bowl Sunday by dropping Renaissance Act II and two new country songs, she and Tony Hale played boss and assistant in a Verizon ad.
Reminiscent of his role as the beleaguered and loyal Gary in Veep, Hale played the iconic's singer assistant, trying his best to keep up with his boss' attempts to break the internet.
Hale said that it has been a forte of his, playing awkward men overshadowed by his powerful female boss (in Veep) and mother (Arrested Development). The two-time Emmy winner (one for
Leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, Verizon had posted hints on their Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) pages. On Instagram, Hale is seen working hard at a lemonade stand, asking, “Hold up — she wants me to squeeze all these lemons by myself?” referencing the iconic singer's 2016 album Lemonade and the song Hold Up.” On X, the actor asks ReNeigh, the crystal horse in 2023's Renaissance World Tour, “So should we be in a Super Bowl commercial? Yay or nay?”
As for how it all came together, Hale said it happened “pretty quick.”
“I got the call from my agent, like, ‘There's this possibility to do a Super Bowl ad.' I was like, ‘That’s great.' And then they said it was Beyoncé, and I was like, ‘What?' My daughter had gone to her concert and was telling me all about it. I didn't go, but she and I had just seen the ‘Renaissance' film. I'm obviously a fan. The whole thing was incredibly cool and exciting,” he explained.
“The hard part was that I couldn't tell my daughter. My wife is a makeup artist, so she worked with me on the commercial, and for the three weeks after we couldn't mention it. We were like, ‘This is killing us.' She had asked, ‘What are you guys doing?' I said, ‘Oh, we’re just shooting this industrial for a tech company.' She didn't think twice about it,” Hale added.
But the teasers did their job when the actor's daughter finally cottoned on and texted him, having “coded” it.
“She picked up on the lemons and me saying ‘hold up' in the beginning of the teaser. I kind of didn't want her to see the teaser, because I wanted to tape her when she was watching the Super Bowl, but these teenagers are just too smart,” he related.
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Teenagers ARE smart. The adults, sometimes, not so much.
“But I had one friend [who saw the lemon teaser] and said, ‘Is it Martha Stewart?' I’m like, ‘Dude, you are way off,'” Hale added.
As for what Beyoncé was like on set, he described are being kind and “incredibly talented, but she could not be more down to earth.”
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