During the Super Bowl, Dunkin’ and Ben Affleck threw audiences back to the 1990s to witness the greatest sitcom cast that never was. In “Good Will Dunkin’,” TV icons Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Jaleel White, Alfonso Ribeiro, Jasmine Guy, Ted Danson, and Jason Alexander—and Tom Brady, for some reason—all unite to play out a far different version of the 1997 classic Good Will Hunting.
“Good Will Dunkin'” was one of the better ads of the night, with Affleck’s amusing Avengers-esque assembly of television stars targeting nostalgic millennials. In a conversation with Esquire, Alexander—who famously played drip king George Constanza on Seinfeld—says the ad was “great fun,” with the added element of an on-screen de-aging process that intrigued him. “It was pitched [to me] exactly like what you see, as if Good Will Hunting had started as a bad pilot,” Alexander says. “It is the found pilot, and we’re gonna de-age you. That was the pitch.”
A culmination of teasers that included another ad during the Grammys, Affleck introduces an unearthed TV pilot on an old VHS. In Good Will Dunkin’, he “stars” as Will Dunkin, a genius with a hilarious ’90s Matt Damon wig stuck at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Boston. (Where else?) His pals, played by the great sitcom stars, all deliver riffs on Good Will Hunting and other ’90s TV memes (“We were on a break,” etc.) before Jennifer Aniston shows up with her new man, Tom Brady. An underrated aspect of the ad is that Dunkin’ temporarily returns to its old name Dunkin’ Donuts, faithfully replicating a time before the chain rebranded in 2019.
The sitcom legends in the spot all have combined credits that include Friends, Cheers, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, A Different World, and Family Matters. Alexander recalls “an assumed collegiate feeling” on the set, given their shared experiences as stars of a bygone era. Never mind that none of them have actually worked together before. “It was as if we all knew the drill and had done it before, when in fact we had not.”
“It was comfortable,” Alexander adds. “The minute we got together, there was that familiarity. I wondered [going in], ‘Is there a pecking order? Is it going to be weird?’ Not at all. It’s like the Little Rascals showed up. I kind of clocked that shared experiences, even though [they’re] not the same experiences, can be bonding.”
The de-aging process was less technical than it might look. The Seinfeld star says he wasn’t scanned by “a thousand cameras.” Instead, it was a combination of old-fashioned hair and makeup with a touch of CGI. “They added hair pieces that resemble, I’ll laughably say, my hairline in the ’90s. It was close [enough], and I figured they’ll nail it when they CGI it. That was never my hair. But I look younger. God bless them, they got me back to my thirties.”
While Affleck and his go-to coffee chain affectionately parody television that have all but vanished on streaming, Jason Alexander thinks there’s something deeper at play. For him, sitcoms were the last times “we we’re watching the same things at the same time.”
“Once we tripped into the 21st century, our viewing habits began to splinter. None of us were experiencing the same thing. I know people who love Breaking Bad who saw it five years after it left the air. They missed the period everyone was talking about it. This ’90s thing, there’s enough people who carry that with them that there’s a nostalgia for that. Wasn’t it just cool when we were hanging out together watching the same stuff?“
It helps that shows like Seinfeld still hold up. “They’re still good. They’re still funny,” Alexander says. “The humor hasn’t diminished with time. They change eventually, but right now they’re rock solid. Why these shows continue to resonate, I wish I knew. I guess people are still recognizing themselves. The humor is still tickling them.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com ’
