As Super Bowl LVIII looms large over Las Vegas, and the wider world prepares to watch Taylor Swift’s boyfriend fight tooth and nail for back-to-back titles, Canadians are looking forward to bagging their fair share of Super Bowl commercial air time.
It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without ads, it’s an open secret that companies dish out exorbitant stacks of cash for a sliver of prime-time digital real estate, and for a while, Canadians were privy to the exclusively American content. But, a 2019 Supreme Court ruling left us in the dark. However, in 2024 the tables have turned.
Doritos Canada has produced a quintessentially Canadian ad, shot in a Scarborough film studio and starring two homegrown greats ready to spice up ad breaks with culturally relevant material, and a lot of Doritos.
Host of “Family Feud Canada” Gerry Dee and “The Sex Lives of College Girls” star Amrit Kaur are set to grace our screens with their inimitable banter, and unmistakably Canadian characters.
Despite little information about the commercial itself being revealed, it will depict Kaur and Dee re-enacting famous Super Bowl U.S. advertisements, in an effort to let Canadians in on the full game day experience, check out the teaser below.
A month out from the big game, Now Toronto sat down with Kaur on the set of the commercial.
“I love the concept [of the commercial] it’s really smart. It feels deeply uncomfortable while I’m doing it. Because it feels like I’m bombing. I don’t like bombing. But apparently, that’s funny for people,” Kaur said.
The 30-year-old actress, writer and producer is best known for her career-defining turn on Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max show, where she plays an occasionally reckless yet fiercely talented student comedy writer named Bela Malhotra.
When we met in mid-January, Kaur was sitting bundled in a pile of blankets in her trailer. It was the height of Toronto’s unpleasant, albeit short, cold snap and the warmth of her space provided much-needed respite for us both.
“I’m very selective when I do endorsements,” Kaur began, “but I like the idea of going to America. I found myself being more excited, how do I say this?” she paused to choose her words.
“I grew up in so much of the caste system, thinking something is better than something else. And even being in America, I had my first big break there, then had Canadian auditions come through or projects come through because of that,” she explained.
[But] I’m a first-class person born and raised here. And I love that in whatever way, that is what this Doritos commercial is talking about…. I think it has a bigger concept of the humanity around Canadians [and that] we are not second class.
Outside of the hit TV show, Kaur is an accomplished writer, and theatre company member at Gracemoon Arts, a New York City-based collective of Canadian actors and artists committed to performing arresting and original stories.
“We’re a group of Canadian artists. And I love speaking about it because it works in line with the campaign here. It’s about these Canadian artists who have worked really hard to become fine actors. I am going to America and uplifting Canada to bring us on the international stage as filmmakers but also theatre artists,” Kaur explained with deep-rooted enthusiasm.
Next year, Gracemoon Arts will open its programming with a production of ‘The Dutchman,” off-Broadway, “the dream hub for all artists,” as Kaur put it.
The Doritos commercial will air on February 11 during the Super Bowl.
