If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Charli xcx’s Brat Era may be coming to a close but the pop star brought out the neon green strobe lights one last time for a Super Bowl Poppi commercial, which will debut during the third quarter of the Big Game tonight.
The 30-second spot — directed by “The Moment” filmmaker Aidan Zamiri and also starring Rachel Sennott — is in some ways a reference to the pop star’s “360” music video, which transforms everyday locations like a swanky restaurant, a gym and a hospital into bass-thumping raves. In the Poppi commercial, a college lecture hall gets the ‘Brat’ makeover when a student cracks open a can of the prebiotic soda, summoning Charli xcx in a pair of rave glasses and leather hot shorts.
“Whenever we’re together, we have a wild time,” Charli tells Variety of Sennott, who before playing a version of herself in A24’s “The Moment,” appeared in the singer’s “360” music video. “It’s so easy to do stuff with her because she totally gets my world and I get her.” The pair even hit a house party together in L.A after shooting the commercial. “That’s just our energy together,” Charli says.
As for Poppi, this marks the third consecutive year the probiotic soda company has aired a Super Bowl ad. “We approached the Super Bowl as a social-first moment designed to move at the speed of culture, not just a single broadcast spot,” Poppi’s SVP of marketing Kristina MacIntosh says. “By leading with bold creative and collaborators who understand how ideas travel digitally, we turned the Super Bowl into a living, shareable moment.”
Ahead of her Super Bowl debut, Variety caught up with Charli about “The Moment,” reuniting with Sky Ferreira for the “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack and more:
This Super Bowl ad is all about curating a vibe. Why was Rachel Sennott a good fit for this?
Well, Rachel is really fun. Whenever we’re together, we have a wild time. We actually went out to a house party after we shot the commercial. That’s just kind of our energy together. She was perfect because we wanted to sort of reference our previous collaboration. She was obviously in the ‘360’ videos. So it’s so easy to do stuff with her, because she totally gets my world and I get her. It was natural, very vibes. Rachel definitely has a good time.
Kylie Jenner, who appears in ‘The Moment’ is also a vibe. What was it like preparing with Kylie for that scene?
Honestly, Kylie was just so easy to work with — very cool, very down to earth. She was just totally on board to play around with the idea of ‘Persona.’ It was super easy to shoot with her. She knows Aidan, the director, as well so it was honestly a really fun, easy day. We shot for a couple of hours and we were done. Obviously, she’s a natural. It was great.
Kylie plays a version of herself, like many of the characters. Did she have any say in the script, or improvise at all?
Even though it was scripted and there was an excellent screenplay written, it was important for us and for Aidan to allow all the characters and the actors to be able to improv if they wanted to — just as long as the character was fully formed and rooted in the world that we created. Improv was a part of it because we were shooting a documentary style and it really was like a documentary. We wanted everything to feel unbelievably naturalistic and really, truly real. So everybody was definitely improv-ing.
As an actor, what was it like portraying a version of yourself?
Obviously for me, I know myself so well and I know the version of me on screen that could be a part of me. So I found it very entertaining to kind of amplify some of those things. It was cool because I think the whole thing about the film is, like, even though it’s not based on reality, it sort of is a version of reality that could have happened. The way I behave in the film is [based on] scenarios that could have happened, and I could have reacted that way. So I found it quite fun to go there.
You also reunited with Sky Ferreira on the ‘Wuthering Heights’ soundtrack, which was recently unveiled. How did that collaboration come together?
Sky and I have worked together before, we’ve done a song together. We’ve performed together in the past, and we’ve just known each other for a really long time because we kind of came up in the industry at a similar time. We’ve always been around in each other’s lives. It’s always great to work with Sky, and I really just felt that she kind of belonged on this soundtrack because of the tone of Emerald [Fennell’s] screenplay. It just felt right to me, so I reached out to her and we worked together in the studio. I’m super into the song that came out.
What was the process of creating songs for the film? Did you watch cuts first and then go into the studio, or the other way around?
Actually myself and Finn Keane, who is the main producer across the album, we kind of were writing in isolation, without a film. We read the screenplay, and then we immediately started making songs because I kind of felt inspired to do so. And then later down the line, we began watching the film. We really felt that it was important that the song sort of be related to what Emerald wrote, but also stand on their own as an album. So that’s why we kind of decided to do it that way, and then later on, we would be more back and forth with Emerald, and she was kind of like swapping songs in and out depending on what we wrote, depending on the tone that she wanted. We made different versions which were used exclusively in the film, things like that.