RETURN OF THE DOS EQUIS GUY:
THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD IS BACK!
During yesterday’s NFL Conference Championship games, the Dos Equis guy made his comeback!
I looked it up. He’s been on a TEN-YEAR hiatus. His last commercial was back in January 2016.
Television commercials typically wouldn’t be something to write about. But the “Most Interesting Man in the World” marketing campaign is one of the cleverest and most successful over the past two decades. Everybody knows those commercials and can identify that guy just from his face. That’s genius salesmanship.
I have no idea why the one and only original “Dos Equis guy” was dropped in the first place. Maybe they thought he was getting too old. I did see a short-lived reboot of this character, played a much younger bearded guy in a suit holding a beer, but that imposter had none of the suave charisma of the original. I also suspected that perhaps the image of a 70+ year old man wrestling alligators, climbing mountain peaks, and being the hit of every social gathering (often surrounded by fawning supermodels in the ads) might have rubbed some in the target audience the wrong way as being just a bit creepy.
Well, Dos Equis guy is back! And he’s wrestling gators, scaling mountain peaks, and surrounded by hot babes.
Now, here’s the amazing part. The Dos Equis isn’t Mexican, or even Hispanic. His name is Jonathan Goldsmith. And, he’s 87 !
Just wow!
Goldsmith did lots of New York stage theatre. He also played numerous TV roles, mostly on one-off appearances, including lots of crime shows and westerns — 25 TV westerns by one count. Imagine, Goldsmith as a cowboy. He’s the best *New-York-Jew-playing-a- Mexican* since Eli Wallach. One famous claim to fame is — Goldsmith was cast as the bad guy in the John Wayne movie “The Shootist.” The movie ends when Goldsmith’s character gets shot right between the eyes. The crew had to film the scene seven times before the right take was finalized. Goldsmith later described his face — which was bludgeoned with blood capsules fired from a pellet gun repeatedly, as feeling like raw hamburger afterward.
Look at him now.
The kicker to the story is — Goldsmith almost never even auditioned for the part that made him famous worldwide. When the initial campaign was first launched and the company was casting, he was approaching 70 and had a call from his agent. The audition was for a new beer advertising campaign for a Mexican beer with minimal market share. This didn’t exactly seem like an ideal fit. Goldsmith later said he was going to skip the audition, but his wife talked him into going, and well — now he’s the most interesting man in the world.
Great to see him back again!