UPDATED at 8:00 p.m. ET: The new Heineken Ant-Man commercial made its debut during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 12. Watch the full version above.
Superheroes can now drink at the 2023 Super Bowl, thanks to Paul Rudd, Ant-Man, and Heineken. Super Bowl Sunday may be all about beers and chicken wings, but Rudd and the beer company want to give fans the option to do so responsibly and without guilt.
The Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantanium star has teamed up with the popular beer brand to star in their latest ad for their alcohol-free Heineken® 0.0, which will make its debut during the Super Bowl LVII game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday, Feb. 12. Rudd has also been busy this week promoting his upcoming Marvel film, which hits theaters Friday, Feb. 17, but before that premieres, the actor is making his return to Super Bowl commercials this weekend but this time, as Ant-Man.
In the new commercial, Ant-Man walks into Hank’s lab and grabs a beer out of the fridge and he finds a note from Hank warning him against “drinking and shrinking” and to keep the ants from drinking the beer—but since it’s alcohol-free both Scott and the ants get to freely enjoy the beverage. In a previous commercial, Rudd’s beloved character is busy working in his lab while enjoying an iced cold beer. An ant named Anton calls him out for it and the superhero makes it clear that it is alcohol-free and safe to drink before going out and saving the world.
This will be the first time in some time that fans will see him as Scott Lang/Ant-Man but it’s all in preparation for the Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantanium release next week. In case you’ve lost count, this weekend fans will get to enjoy football and Rihanna’s halftime show, as well as an Ant-Man appearance. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Complex hopped on a quick call with Rudd to chat about his Heineken partnership, working with Jonathan Majors in Quantanium, and what it was like filming inside the Quantum Realm.
I’m having an Ant-Man-filled week. I talked to the cast yesterday and you were the missing piece, so I’m happy to be here today.
Oh, great. Thank you. Well, so am I. I know what you mean. I’ve been having Ant-Man Week myself.
And it’s not over yet. You’re kicking things off with the Super Bowl commercial, so congratulations on that. This isn’t your first time and this is not your first partnership with a brand either. So what was it about Heineken that you found appealing that made you agree to sign on for this opportunity?
Well, I love that we could kind of merge these things and play this character that I really care about and love. And I thought with this new Heineken alcohol-free product that it was a really fun way and a great way to have Scott enjoy a beer without the beer, and without the alcoholic part. I thought it was a lot of fun. And I’ve enjoyed this product in my own life and it’s nice. Sometimes you want a coffee, but you got to have decaf because you got to go to sleep. You can’t stay up. Hey, sometimes you want to enjoy a nice cold beer, but you don’t want to have the alcohol for whatever reason. And there are several reasons maybe you don’t want to have it, and now you can.
To save the world is one of them. That’s a good reason.
Yeah. When you’re saving the world, you can’t feel loose on your feet. You want to enjoy a nice cold 0.0 Heineken and go save the universe.
One time bought the Heineken alcohol-free by accident thinking it was the regular kind and I really thought that I was drunk, but it was just a placebo effect, I think. But I enjoyed it.
Hey, there you go. That’s how good it is. You didn’t even know. They’re magicians over there.
Millions of people tune in for the Super Bowl every year and this will be the first time that people see you as Ant-Man in a long time. How does it feel to know that this will be like their intro before going into the movie next week?
It’s cool. I mean, this is a really fun part to play. Obviously, Ant-Man has become near and dear to my heart, and it’s been a big kind of chunk of my life now up until this point. So I’m a big Kansas City Chiefs fan. I love watching football. The fact that Ant-Man is going to show up in a game that God willing the Chiefs are going to pull it off, it’s very exciting. It’s very exciting for me and gratifying, and I still kind of can’t believe it. It’s cool.
My favorite part of the commercial, my favorite aspect of it, is that it looks like it could be a scene in the movie or a deleted scene. Did it feel natural for you to just reprise a role for the ad?
It absolutely felt like an extension of what we do. I mean, besides the suit and the setting and the character and all of that stuff, even the way we went about making it was similar to the way we kind of approach shooting the movies. And it was fun. There was a lot of freedom, so I didn’t really have to stick to a specific script, even though we kind of created the script. There were a lot of moments where I could make up some dialogue every time. There were some fun jokes that we kind of added. And so the experience itself was really fun and similar to filming a Marvel movie.
Now switching gears, Quantumania was incredible. How was it for you to usher in this new talent since you have Kathryn Newton now as Cassie and Jonathan Majors as Kang, which was phenomenal? How was it for you to bring them into this tight-knit family that you’ve built?
Oh, it was great. I mean, it’s fun because it’s our third one. I get to work with a lot of the same cast and actors. We’ve all become friends now at this point. But it was so terrific to have Kathryn who’s a blast and a great actor. And so bubbly and fun and great to play Cassie, adds a whole new energy, a whole new element. And certainly Jonathan as Kang, there’s such a threat. This is the third Ant-Man movie, but by far the biggest threat we’ve ever faced, the biggest villain and he’s a terrific actor. And so what he was bringing to that role really changed the entire feel and it made it exciting and threatening and scary and all of that, so it felt fresh and fun.
For you, Paul, what was the most challenging aspect of filming this movie that takes place mostly in the Quantum Realm as opposed to the other films that you’ve done with Ant-Man?
Right. I mean, that aspect that most of it is in the Quantum Realm and we don’t really get to see what that looks like until the movie is done because the visual effects artists are at work, it was weird because you just don’t know. There were moments when we were shooting in this thing called the volume, which was this LED screen that we would wrap around a sound stage where it would project certain images to give us a sense of what it looked like. But most of the time we didn’t have that luxury, so it really was a blue screen and there are just the general challenges that go along with that. But there are physical things to do. They’re exhausting movies to make. The physical side of it really adds up. And I’d say that after a while, that becomes probably the biggest challenge.
