Willem Dafoe & Catherine O’Hara Star As Pickleball Hustlers In Michelob Ultra’s Super Bowl Commercial

Pickleball has made it to the Super Bowl.

It’s about time, right? Pickleball is only one of the fastest growing sports in America (also the most injury inducing sport as of right now, thanks to all of the older people picking it up). It only makes sense that a Super Bowl advertiser finally recognized the crossover appeal of putting pickleball and football together in the spotlight.

I’m personally looking forward to the flurry of new ads that will be run during the Super Bowl. It’s the only time I truly look forward to the interruption in programming. If I’m being honest, the advertisements are often my favorite part of the “Big Game.” And I say that as someone who watches endless (and potentially unhealthy) amounts of football.

I usually even have a rule at my Super Bowl parties that you can talk all you want during the game, but everyone in attendance has to shut the hell up during commercials (I’m a lot of fun). In my mind, it’s a very fair rule. Everyone loves to watch the commercials that are cooked up specifically for the big game, right? So everyone should shut their pie holes.

To be transparent, I actually do have one problem with Super Bowl ads in the modern age… they don’t actually come out during the Super Bowl anymore. Instead, companies release teasers leading up to the “Big Game,” and some even just release their ads beforehand to try and expand on the commercial’s exposure. I don’t mind the teasers, but releasing the full advertisement totally takes the element of surprise out of the most important (and expensive) advertising of the year.

It appears that Michelob Ultra is banking on their commercial being entertaining enough to not need the element of surprise when the Super Bowl rolls around. The beer brand went ahead and released their special ad – starring Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara – and as they likely intended, the ad spot is already getting a lot of attention online. I’ll be the first to admit… I never saw Dafoe and O’Hara as pickleball people until now.

The premise of their advertisement is simple: the beloved actor and actress are a sandbagging pickleball duo. Dafoe and O’Hara convince others to play them in pickleball, and to the victor goes the spoils. Michelob Ultras are on the line for seemingly every match they play in, and Dafoe and O’Hara prove to be an unstoppable, pickleball-playing-pair.

It’s too bad that there’s not a category at the Oscars for “Best Acted Commercial,” because this Michelob Ultra ad would undoubtedly be the leader in the clubhouse. Watching Willem Dafoe switch from a happy and polite casual player into serious, ruthless pickleball mode is like watching Michael Jordan shoot a fadeaway jumper.. pure art. And Catherine O’Hara really sells herself as a pickleball master as well.

The tagline for the commercial is “The Ultra Hustle,” and the minute long ad spot features the actor and actress crushing anyone they face on the pickleball court – and constantly seeking out more competition (thus, more Michelobs). Not even a super star team of former NFL wide receiver Randy Moss and WNBA player Sabrina Ionescu were a worthy match for the Michelob Ultra loving pair of Dafoe and O’Hara.

All in all, it’s a really fun beer commercial, and isn’t that what the Super Bowl is all about?