{"id":355492,"date":"2026-03-30T17:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355492\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:04:11","slug":"cheekface-turn-down-att-commercial-over-ice-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355492\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheekface Turn Down AT&T Commercial Over ICE Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not everyone is chasing the commercial-money bag. Los Angeles indie rock trio Cheekface just announced their upcoming album Podium<\/a> last week, and now they’ve told the story of how they recently turned down a lucrative chance to appear in an AT&T commercial because of the companies ties to ICE and the Dept. Of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

In an Instagram post this morning, Cheekface wrote that a casting director recently contacted them, looking for a “credible, tight-knit band” to appear in a commercial. The casting director didn’t tell them which company the ad would be for, but the gig would’ve paid what the band calls a “really significant” amount of money. Cheekface sent over an audition tape.<\/p>\n

In their Instagram post, Cheekface shared a screenshot text in which the unnamed casting director told the band that they were “one of the favorites for our project,” which turned out to be an AT&T ad, and asked them to meet the director in person. The band responded, “Unfortunately due to AT&T’s contracts with ICE we’re going to decline to go any further with this.” The band says they’re sharing the story to demonstrate that “if you\u2019re a band (or just a person) and you\u2019re offered a bunch of money for something that doesn\u2019t seem right to you, you can say no, and it\u2019ll be fine.”<\/p>\n

In 2024, AT&T announced<\/a> a $146 million-dollar 10-year contract with the Dept. Of Homeland Security. Right now, there’s a petition<\/a> asking AT&T to drop its contracts with Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and ICE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not everyone is chasing the commercial-money bag. Los Angeles indie rock trio Cheekface just announced their upcoming album…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-355492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}