Tony Hale had to lie to daughter about Super Bowl ad with Beyoncé: 'This is killing us'

Dustin Nelson
·3 min read
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"I love the contrast of, like, just the most powerful icon, and then... me," Hale said.

Beyoncé tried to break the internet again during Sunday's Super Bowl. The "My House" singer used a game-day ad from Verizon to announce her new album, Renaissance: Act II, and the release of a pair of country-tinged tracks.

The commercial also featured Tony Hale who offered an almost Gary Walsh-level of assistantship to the singer. For Hale, it wasn't just a surprising pairing, but a domestic problem. Like most Super Bowl commercials, the ad had to be kept under wraps until the big reveal. So Hale had to keep his involvement with the ad a secret from his Beyoncé-loving daughter until Super Bowl Sunday.

"I got the call from my agent, like, 'There’s this possibility to do a Super Bowl ad.' I was like, 'That’s great,'" he told Variety. "I was like, 'What?' My daughter had gone to her concert and was telling me all about it. I didn’t go, but she and I had just seen the Renaissance film," he said. "I’m obviously a fan."

<p>Verizon/YouTube</p> Beyoncé and Tony Hale in Verizon's Super Bowl ad

Verizon/YouTube

Beyoncé and Tony Hale in Verizon's Super Bowl ad

Given his daughter's love of the "Single Ladies" singer, Hale had to do a better job keeping secrets than Buster Bluth might have.

"The hard part was that I couldn’t tell my daughter," Hale said. "My wife is a makeup artist, so she worked with me on the commercial, and for the three weeks after we couldn’t mention it. We were like, 'This is killing us.' She had asked, 'What are you guys doing?' I said, 'Oh, we’re just shooting this industrial for a tech company.'"

Before the Super Bowl, Verizon teased the star's inclusion in its ad with a video featuring Hale working a lemonade stand. "Hold up," he says in the teaser. "She wants me to squeeze all these lemons by myself?" The references to Beyoncé's 2016 album, Lemonade, and her song "Hold Up" were not lost on his daughter.

"I get this text. She goes, 'Dad?' I was like, 'Yes?' She says, 'I’m with my friend, Lola, and we’re breaking this down, and … Dad?'" he said. "She picked up on the lemons and me saying 'hold up' in the beginning of the teaser. I kind of didn’t want her to see the teaser, because I wanted to tape her when she was watching the Super Bowl, but these teenagers are just too smart."

"I love the contrast of, like, just the most powerful icon, and then... me!" Hale said of working with Beyoncé. Though, it could as easily be a quote about many of the characters he's played who have stood in the shadow of powerful women, whether it was Jessica Walter's Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development or literally standing behind Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer on Veep.

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