Tom Hiddleston’s “creepy” new commercial for Centrum vitamins has left fans confused.
The promotional clip was filmed for the Chinese market and debuted on the Avengers star’s Weibo channel earlier this week.
Seemingly filmed from the viewpoint of Hiddleston’s girlfriend, it shows the actor inexplicably preparing a salad (which, among other ingredients, features blueberries and a heart-shaped egg) for breakfast and garnishing it with pepper.
He then gently reminds the viewer to take a Centrum tablet with their unusual morning meal in Mandarin before switching back to English to awkwardly pay his invisible companion a compliment, sheepishly telling them: “You look great, by the way.”
Then, once the salad has presumably been eaten, Hiddleston makes a quick apology while heading for the door, explaining that he’ll “probably be a bit busy for the next few weeks” but will “make it up to you soon.”
A pair of disembodied hands then appears on screen to straighten his collar before Hiddleston abruptly leaves, and the commercial ends.
The advert has been met with bafflement on Twitter, with social media users claiming that the clip has left them with “so many questions.”
“The Tom Hiddleston breakfast advert thing is so CREEPY,” one wrote.
“Did Tom Hiddleston really just make me a plate of raw vegetables for breakfast?” another said, while a further Twitter user branded the advert “an abomination.”
A handful of fans, however, praised the clip and branded it a clever marketing move.
“What a marketing strategy win this will be choosing @twhiddleston,” one wrote.
“At first it made me uncomfortable but I’m coming around to the idea that Tom Hiddleston making me weird vegetable-blackberry-fried-egg breakfasts and being tenderly concerned for my wellbeing would actually be kind of nice!” another suggested.
Hiddleston is currently starring in a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It is as yet unclear whether the actor will reprise his role as Loki in the forthcoming Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame.
