Who Plays The Husband From The Snickers Peanut Brownie Squares Commercial?
For national food brands, change is oftentimes the name of the game. Taco Bell, for example, recently promoted a new feature on its proprietary app that lets users create their own $5 craving box with a commercial full of celebrity cameos. Snickers, meanwhile, recently innovated on its tried-and-true formula with the release of a "Peanut Brownie Squares" Snickers variant. Like traditional Snickers, the Peanut Brownie Squares include peanuts and caramel in a milk chocolate coating. The addition of a brownie on the inside as well as a square form set this new version apart from the brand's standard offering.
To promote its Peanut Brownie Squares candy bar, Snickers ran a commercial in which a rote husband and wife interaction alludes to the addition of a brownie to the Snickers formula. In the advertisement, a man asks his wife a routine "what's wrong?" She replies "nothing," before slowly turning her head away and staring wistfully out an adjacent window. This is a "hidden problem," the commercial's narrator explains. So, in that vein Snickers has added a "hidden comfort" to its flagship product in the form of a brownie.
The ad is minimalist in its construction, featuring simply a man, a woman and a living room setting. That man is portrayed by actor Genesis Oliver.
Genesis Oliver's past work
Genesis Oliver's credits prior to the Snickers Peanut Brownie Squares commercial include a couple of comedic sketches as well as a video game voice acting gig. The role in which viewers are most likely to have seen Oliver before is an appearance on anthology TV series Little America, originally released directly to Apple TV+.
Little America's eight episodes each feature an entirely different cast and crew. Its continuous through-line is a focus on stories about immigrants in America. From episode to episode, that theme is ultimately interpreted in a multitude of ways. Oliver appears in Little America's fourth episode, titled "The Silence." Its name refers to the story's setting of a 10 day silent meditation getaway. Drama ensues due to a budding romance between two of its silence-sworn participants.
In the episode, Oliver plays a character named Romare who is among those participating in the retreat. Due to its setting, "The Silence" features almost no dialogue. Thus, Oliver's single, short line in an approximately fifteen-second Snickers ad is greater than his amount of spoken dialogue in the entirety of his tenure on Little America.
In a similar vein, Oliver also starred in a Kia car commercial in which exactly half of his dialogue is repeating the word "nice." A brief appearance in AMC's canceled vampire drama NOS4A2 rounds out his slate of televised appearances.