SNL imagines how that disastrous Pepsi ad could have happened


Pepsi pulled its controversial protest-themed ad after widespread criticism this week, but Saturday Night Live wasn't about to let the Kendall Jenner spot go quietly into the night. SNL's Beck Bennett stars as the ad's writer and director in a digital short imagining how the tone-deaf commercial could have happened.
On set as production is about to begin, Bennett takes a phone call from his sister and excitedly explains his concept. "I mean, okay, so, well, it's an homage to the resistance," he says, "so there's this huge protest in the streets reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. And so, everybody is marching, right? And they get to these police officers, and you think it's gonna go bad because there's kind of, like, a standoff. And then, Kendall Jenner walks in, and she walks up to one of the police officers, and she hands him a Pepsi. And then, that Pepsi brings everybody together. Isn't that, like, the best ad ever?"
Well, not quite — but Cecily Strong's Kendall Jenner, like, totally gets it. Watch the full sketch below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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