I came up with putting Samuel L in these commercials under pressure, in the last minute, when none of the other ideas were landing. Who else could America enjoy but also feel safe with? (SLJ, of course!) Then, just as last minute, I wrote the initial campaign commercials while on the phone with the casting director who found a lookalike for testing. It all happened within a couple hours, and then DDB and Capital One were able to bring “No BS Banking” to America with Samuel L. That was a while ago, and these motherf*ckers are still running. Fun fact: two of the first run of scripts had curse words. One made it to air. That did not make America happy! But it made me happy.

Another fun fact: before Samuel L., the actor was going to be Donald Glover, playing a character called Cashis King (get it?). He was a boxer who would show up in cash back moments. Why a boxer? Only cause of the Cashis name seemed clever. The scripts were fun. Glover would have killed it. But the real reason it didn’t happen was that the Capital One execs didn’t think Donald was a star!!!! They wanted someone with more star power and thought he was too obscure. Then he became the king.