Why Jeremy Allen White Looks So Ripped In His Steamy Calvin Klein Commercial
Between "The Iron Claw" and Season 2 of "The Bear" — the year's best comedy according to Looper's 2023 TV awards — it's hardly controversial to suggest that Jeremy Allen White was 2023's biggest breakout star. Building on that momentum, White became the new face of Calvin Klein's men's underwear line in a photo and video ad campaign during the first week of 2024. In his debut Calvin Klein TV commercial, White is walking down a nearly empty New York City street before ascending a fire escape to an urban rooftop. There he quickly removes a tight tank top and a pair of short black shorts before hitting a pull-up bar a couple of times and climbing onto a scenic rooftop couch. All the while the camera finds new ways to ogle at his shredded, scantily clad physique.
White's musculature in this commercial, including prominent six pack abs, is the result of slimming down after his "Iron Claw" training regimen. To play professional wrestler Kerry Von Erich, he ate excessive portions of food in conjunction with heavy weight training and limited cardio. As a result, he built up massive muscles.
In a GQ interview about his Calvin Klein ads, White revealed that he slimmed down plenty after completing work on "The Iron Claw." Given his still-impressive physique, he most likely maintained an active exercise routine while lowering his caloric during this time, resulting in starker definition of the muscles he already had.
Learning to play the part of a wrestler prepared Jeremy Allen White for his underwear ads
Plenty of professional wrestlers, including the real-life Kerry Von Erich, perform in little more than a pair of briefs. Jeremy Allen White told GQ that his work on "The Iron Claw" didn't just get him into the physical shape his Calvin Klein ad campaign required but prepared him mentally too. "I was used to running around in front of large groups of people in my underwear," he said. "So maybe there was some mental and emotional prep from that job."
One valid question inherent in White's "Iron Claw" transformation is whether or not he incorporated performance-enhancing drugs, in a Hollywood climate that tends to reward male actors supplementing their physiques with steroids. While it's impossible to know for sure, at the very least the majority of comments in a Reddit thread questioning the methodology behind White's training agree that he bulked up naturally.
White's look in his Calvin Klein commercial, then, seems to be the result of hard work, both during and in the wake of training to play a professional wrestler. Of course, professional actors have access to expensive, cutting-edge resources, hence why he was able to build up such impressive muscles so much faster than it takes most non-professionals.