Ben Affleck has accumulated a long list of movie credits and even two Academy Awards over the course of his career, but for better or worse, he may be best known in pop culture nowadays for two things: his friendship with Matt Damon and his association with Dunkin' Donuts. The two friends and collaborators opened up about a "genius" idea for a Dunkin' commercial that never made it to air, and not just because he wasn't wearing a signature orange jump suit in it. After how Damon and Affleck described it, though, I wish we could have at least seen an outtake like we did for his 2023 Super Bowl commercial!
The two pals spoke with Capital UK about Ben Affleck's performance in Dunkin' Donuts commercials, which have reportedly been very lucrative for the actor beyond any perks like "Dunking"-inspired march. Matt Damon chimed in to share with the world a commercial that Affleck filmed when he was doubling as a drive-through employee, but will likely never see the light of day:
There was actually an amazing one that he did that they couldn't air because he did a bit where he was telling everybody coming through the drive-thru that they didn't have coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.
Dunkin' Donuts may have a sweet treat in the franchise name, but a lot of people go to stores for coffee rather than confectionary. Depending on how early this was in the day, I can imagine that there were plenty of confused customers! That is, if the Batman v Superman star taking fast food orders wasn't already confusing enough. Affleck went on to clarify where he was when he tried to deny people coffee:
We were in Bedford, Massachusetts and telling people, 'We don't have coffee.'
It's no surprise that Ben Affleck was filming commercials in Massachusetts; not only is that where the company was founded and he (and Matt Damon) grew up, but (according to data from Dunkin' Donuts' locations listing and the United States Census Bureau) the state has an astonishing ratio of people per Dunkin' location with a total of 7.136 million people and 1032 locations. To compare, New York comes in behind with 1453 locations for the 19,867 million people.
In case you were curious – and why wouldn't you be? – that amounts to just over 6.9k people/1 Dunkin' in MA vs. just under 13.7k people/1 Dunkin' in NY. Specific to the location that the Argo star/director visited: Bedford, Massachusetts has an even lower ratio of around 5k people/Dunkin' location with a population of just below 15k for three stores.
Matt Damon went on to explain why Ben Affleck's approach of claiming the Bedford, MA store didn't have coffee didn't exactly fly with the company.
'We don't have coffee.' These guys are on their way to like go paint a house, you know, these guys are like working [guys]. And they were not having it. And it was so funny. But then, you know, Dunkin' obviously goes 'You can't advertise that we don't have coffee.'
Having been in a train station in Boston (about 45 minutes from Bedford) with not one but two Dunkin' locations, a third across the street and a fourth around the corner, I wasn't surprised by the Massachusetts location for the commercial even before I channeled my inner Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting to crunch the numbers. Affleck chimed it to say that he "thought it was genius," and added:
'You don't have coffee?' 'No, we're all out of coffee.' 'Bagels?' 'Nah, we don't have bagels.' 'What do ya got?' 'Water.' [Laughs] 'I didn't wait around for water!'
Alas, we'll likely never get any footage of Ben Affleck denying Dunkin' customers any of their usual pick-me-ups, but there's a good chance he'll be back in his uniform to represent the company in the not-too-distant future. A new Super Bowl commercial is reportedly in the works, with big names like Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Jason Alexander, and Tom Brady rumored to be involved.
Considering that I have a far more vivid memories of recent years' Dunkin' ads than I do the actual football games that were played, I'd be surprised not to have Ben Affleck trying to sell me donuts and (maybe) coffee on Super Bowl Sunday by this point.
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