Unlike the majority of comedians when they’re first cast on Saturday Night Live, Beck Bennett was well known to a lot of people when the show hired him, although maybe not by name. He was the star of an extremely successful series of nationwide commercials. In fact, our article on the show’s new cast members that season referenced him as AT&T commercial actor Beck Bennett, the only one of the additions we called out in the headline.
Sadly, those hilarious commercials came to an end around the same time as his casting, and it turns out that wasn’t by accident. Bennett sat for an interview with fellow ex-SNL cast members David Spade and Dana Carvey during an episode of their Fly On The Wall podcast, and those commercials came up. He said showrunner Lorne Michaels, after he was cast, told him he couldn’t do the commercials anymore, which was a little worrying since not everyone cast on the show makes it over the long haul. Here’s a portion of his quote…
When I got on SNL, I was still doing these AT&T commercials, which was such a great gig, and (Lorne) was like, ‘You’re not the AT&T guy anymore. We want you to be known for SNL.’... I was like, ‘OK. Cool. So, we’re guaranteeing how many seasons?’ It was my first year and there were like six new cast members, and it was like, ‘We’re all staying? I don’t think so.’
The commercials in question were part of a campaign called It’s Not Complicated and were directed by Jorma Taccone. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s one of the Lonely Island guys with Andy Samberg. Taccone’s recommendation apparently helped set him up with the SNL audition, which Bennett crushed but then indirectly led to the run of commercials ending.
With all due respect to 30 Rock’s Beeper King Dennis Duffy and his hilarious Mayhem commercials, I think the It’s Not Complicated campaign might be the funniest series I’ve ever seen. Each one featured Bennett interviewing a bunch of little kids and asking them really obvious questions, like if they want more or less of something. You can check out some examples below…
It’s unclear if Michaels would have a different opinion about Bennett doing the commercials if he were just coming into the cast now. He’s shown a willingness to let veteran cast members miss episodes to film movies and tv shows and has let Kenan Thompson, among others, shoot commercials in recent years. A lot of former cast members have said he’s mellowed out as he’s gotten older and is a lot softer and more approachable now, but it’s also worth pointing out that most of those exceptions have been for cast members who have been on the show for years.
If Bennett would have been offered the commercials after he’d already put in five years or more on the SNL cast, maybe Michaels would have felt differently, even at the time. We just don’t know for sure, since there doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule.
That being said, everything obviously worked out for Bennett. He starred on the show for eight seasons and was in a ton of notable sketches, as well as a lot of fantastic weirdness with Kyle Mooney. He was also, by all accounts, beloved by his fellow cast members when he left. In the time since, he’s continued to work regularly and recently had a comedic role in Superman as Clark Kent’s office frenemy Steve Lombard.
I have no idea if Bennett and Taccone will ever join forces to do another round of It’s Not Complicated commercials for AT&T, but I would absolutely love it if they did.
