Luke Wilson Explains How His Super Bowl 2019 Commercial Resembles An ‘SNL’ Skit

Sure, Sunday’s a huge day for Super Bowl 2019 competitors New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams, but it’s also a momentous day for actor Luke Wilson. He’s starring in a Colgate Total Super Bowl commercial, and it’ll be his first time having an ad premiere during the big game.

The star of the upcoming “Stargirl” series knows “the commercials rival the game” for a lot of people, which is why he’s excited to be part of this yearly tradition, he told International Business Times.

Wilson likens having a commercial premiere during the Super Bowl to having a movie open up in theaters, “except more people would see this ad than really see any movie.” With so many eyes on it, he’s hopeful viewers will enjoy it and think it’s as fun and funny as he does.

The 30-second spot features the “Legally Blonde” actor getting up close and personal with his co-workers, a la the close talker from “Seinfeld.” He’s right in front of people’s faces and often walking backwards to stay close to them, all while explaining the pros of using Colgate Total.

“There’s no such thing as too close,” Wilson says in the Bryan Buckley-directed Super Bowl 2019 commercial, which is apparently something people on set truly believed and had to quote back to him.

“I definitely did have to get told, ‘Uh, yeah, okay, Luke, that looks good, but if you could just get a little closer to Larry, that’d be great,’” he told IBT. “So, I did find myself apologizing a lot. It’s been my experience, in the past, on film that if you’re gonna be that close, it’s usually leading into some kind of movie kiss, which this was not. So, it was definitely awkward at times, but, in a great way.”

The commercial’s physical humor mixed with its short runtime “made it feel like a skit,” Wilson said. “It just kind of instantly felt like something you’d do on ‘SNL’ or something, where you kind of have to embrace it, even though it might not come naturally to be nose-to-nose with somebody you didn’t know or weren’t romantically involved with.”

You can catch all the hilarious awkwardness of Wilson’s Colgate Total commercial on TV when it airs during Super Bowl LIII on CBS on Sunday.