Jeremy Strong explains that it was his own suggestion to take a coffee bath for the unusual Dunkin’ commercial with Ben Affleck: “I got carried away”.

Jeremy Strong, the star of Succession, unveiled that the idea for the peculiar Dunkin advertisement featuring him alongside Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck was actually his own creation.

In the ad, Strong played a fictionalized version of himself, embodying a method actor who immerses himself into a tub filled with Dunkin’ coffee grounds as part of the preparation for shooting Ben’s commercial.

According to Strong’s interview with Vanity Fair, Ben initially proposed a concept that celebrated Strong’s character from Succession. However, the idea involved Strong wearing a tracksuit and concluding with a rap performance, reminiscent of Kendall’s rap, targeting other coffee brands. Strong expressed his discomfort with the original proposal, saying, “I can’t do that.”

The actor was instead inspired by Martin Sheen rising from the mud in Apocalypse Now, adding that they debated between going “highbrow” and using tea instead before settling on coffee.

“I just went overboard with the idea, and Ben was absolutely amazing and wonderful and receptive to all of it,” he said.

“God knows what the coffee sludge was made from,” he said. “They prepared it in a way that I didn’t have to get in it. But of course, I did anyway. It’s all really silly. The world is so dark now, and the work that I’ve been doing for a long time has weighed so heavily on me, it was nice to have a little burst of levity.”

In an interview with Variety, Strong also explained that it felt important to take the commercial in a different direction because he was not interested in “rehashing” what he already accomplished on Succession.

“I  want to put distance between myself and that show and achieve escape velocity,” he admitted.

The commercial was a direct response to the criticism Strong faced for his method acting, much of which came from his Succession co-star Brian Cox, who has called  it “fucking annoying,” amongst other things.

Strong responded to the criticisms once and for all in Variety. “I had no trouble taking the piss out of myself,” he said. “I’ve been accused of being this incredibly self-serious, pretentious person. And I do take my work extremely seriously. If you give me a piece of material, I won’t let anything stand between me and what I think I need to do to serve it.”

He added, “But I thought it’d be good to have a laugh at this idea of being a method actor, because I’ve never called myself a method actor, and I’m not a method actor. It’s all about imagination and commitment.”

Scroll up to watch the Dunkin’ commercial in full.