As “Saturday Night Live” looks set to add five new faces to its cast for the upcoming season, at least one of them will be familiar to viewers
Beck Bennett, the face of AT&T’s “It’s Not Complicated” ad campaign, is set to help fill the void after five major “Not ready for primetime players” have departed the long-running skit comedy.
In the ads, the 28-year-old plays a straight-faced moderator tasked with asking a focus group of children about what they expect from their cell phone provider.
The kids end up providing hilarious answers about fleeing from werewolves, living on islands made of candy and wanting a cheetah to be strapped to the back of one of their grandmothers.
“It’s pretty much all improvised,” Bennett told E! News in May. “They start with the basic questions…and each one of those principles has one or two scripts, just in case. Because you want to have a safety in case these kids don’t say something fun or interesting. But they always do.”
Before striking gold with the AT&T gig, Bennett was a member of Good Neighbor, a comedy troupe he formed with a trio of buddies while studying acting at the University of Southern California. Kyle Mooney, another of the rumored “SNL” additions, is also part of the group.
Good Neighbor first gained attention when their 2007 video “Pregnant Jamie Lynn Speaks Out” went viral. The clip, a satire of TMZ’s breathless on-the-scene reporting, features a toddler in the role of Britney Spears’ younger sister.
Other videos have proven to be hits, including one that garnered a note of support from Steven Spielberg. They also shot a pilot about a dysfunctional local talk show for Comedy Central.
But still, it’s the AT&T campaign for which Bennett is best known.
“At first, I was worried about getting typecast,” Bennett told the Daily Beast in April. “But this is such a great campaign because I’m playing a character. I’m not looking at a camera and selling a product directly to the audience. I don’t have a catchphrase.”
And with the news that he’s close to being added to the “SNL” cast, it looks as if he’s safely evaded that fate.