Dylan Mulvaney says it’d be ‘epic’ to do Super Bowl beer ad after Bud Light saga
Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney said it would be “epic” to one day star in a beer advertisement at the Super Bowl — just months after her disastrous partnership with Bud Light sparked widespread backlash.
Mulvaney, 26, fantasized about her future as she confessed in a wide-ranging interview with The Cut that the fallout from the Bud Light saga had been a “huge wake-up call” for her.
“Maybe it’d be epic … if in like 10 years I got to do a beer commercial for a Super Bowl,” she said in the interview published Wednesday.
The influencer, who rose to social media stardom documenting her transition on TikTok, said she now realizes in the wake of the Bud Light fallout that she was naïve about the realities of being a trans woman in the public eye.
“I think that some trans elders probably looked at me this last year and were like, ‘B—h. You have so far to go.’ I think they probably saw what has happened to me these last few months coming,” Mulvaney said.
“This was a good wake-up call for me. Now I’m a more realistic person.”
The controversy engulfing Mulvaney erupted back in April when Anheuser-Busch sent her a Bud Light beer can with her face on it to celebrate her 365th day of girlhood — the popular TikTok series she started about her transition.
After she broadcast the Bud Light can to her social media followers, outraged conservatives immediately waged a war against Mulvaney and called for a boycott of the brand — sending its sales plummeting.
Mulvaney went dark on social media for several weeks as she was blasted by an “extreme amount of transphobia and hate.” She has since resurfaced and talked publicly about what she went through.
“I think hopefully years from now we’ll look back on this time period and be like, ‘What the f–k was that?’” Mulvaney told the magazine, adding that she believes she could eventually charm some of her haters into liking her.
“I don’t like taking myself too seriously. I want to be the funny one,” she said of moving forward after the saga.
“I don’t want to be the one that’s scared, the one who’s controversial — that word, controversial, drives me f–king insane. What really makes me controversial? That I’m trans? That I’m hyperfeminine? That I make jokes? That I overshare? Because I actually like being myself or that, God forbid, I’m happy?
“Maybe that’s what makes me controversial. I don’t think I’ve actually f–ked up majorly. I think that the world is f–ked up. Cheers to that.”
Meanwhile, Bud Light sales are still floundering months after the saga first exploded.
Modelo Especial knocked Bud Light off its decades-long perch as the nation’s top-selling beer in the wake of boycotts, according to data from NielsenIQ published last month.
Modelo, which is distributed in the US by New York-based Constellation Brands, had an 8.34% share of dollars spent on beer compared to the 8.28% for Bud Light through Aug. 12, the data showed.