Remember when Melania Trump made an Aflac commercial? Her husband does
And you thought the commercials for the Super Bowl would get all the attention this week.
Back in 2005, a “lovely woman” named Melania Trump starred in an Aflac commercial that probably would have remained in some dusty corner of our collective memory if her husband hadn’t brought it up on Wednesday.
It’s the one where Trump swaps voices with the iconic Aflac duck.
The First Lady ends up with duck feet at the end of the commercial, which was her acting debut.
During a White House visit on Wednesday, an Aflac employee gave President Donald Trump a pair of socks decorated with Aflac ducks, CBS News reported.
“Oh good. Your chairman (Dan Amos) I know very well, and he's done a fantastic job,” the president said. “They actually a long time ago hired my wife to do a big commercial.”
“You know that right?” he continued. “An Aflac commercial and I think it was a successful commercial too.”
Trump, a former model, was newly married to “The Apprentice” host when the commercial debuted. It was notable at the time because it ended a string of commercials in which the Aflac duck didn’t speak, AdWeek reported in 2005.
The 30-second commercial, filmed in black and white, is called “Experiment.” It shows the First Lady and Aflac duck strapped to tables in a creepy laboratory.
A mad scientist explains to his assistant that he’s going to transpose the voices of the duck and the “lovely woman” to “tell the world the benefits of Aflac with sex appeal.”
After the switch is thrown, the duck sounds like Trump and she sounds like comic Gilbert Gottfried, who gave voice to the duck until he was fired in 2011 for tweeting jokes about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
“Following five years of saying only ‘Aflac,’ we believe viewers will enjoy seeing the Aflac duck talk. The commercial gives the duck a voice in a very clever and entertaining way,” Aflac CEO and chairman Amos said of the commercial when it was released.
“We were pleased that Melania Trump was available to help the duck talk about the benefits of Aflac with glamorous appeal.”
Trump herself, who had no way to know much bigger things would come her way, thought the commercial would be part of her legacy.
“I am very excited to make my acting debut in the latest Aflac commercial,” she said in a statement at the time.
“Donald is known for saying ‘You’re fired’; maybe I will be known for saying ‘Aflac.'”
This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 9:37 AM with the headline "Remember when Melania Trump made an Aflac commercial? Her husband does."