Walmart serves Walton Goggins as The Grinch to heat up Black Friday
Walton Goggins has played complex characters on shows like “The Shield” and “Justified.” Now he’s hoping his latest nuanced act will help an unexpected beneficiary: Walmart.
Goggins reprises his role as The Grinch in an attempt to draw attention to the retail giant’s plans for Black Friday. New deals are available from November 25 to 30, while Cyber Monday promotions expire on December 1. Goggins has appeared in Walmart ads since June and says the decision to tackle The Grinch during the holidays wasn’t made lightly.
“When they brought this idea up to me, I just cried,” the actor confessed during a recent interview, noting that “my elation turned to fear, because the thing is, The Grinch is one of the most beloved characters in literature. Dr. Seuss is literature and this is one of the most iconic characters in the world.”
The actor says he carried “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” with him for weeks on several trips, immersing himself in the story and the author’s portrayal of the character, who must overcome a strong desire to ruin the holidays for a nearby town until he discovers that the holiday spirit of its citizens rests on care and camaraderie, not gifts and commercialism.
But Goggins’ true recognition of the character didn’t come until he was fully adorned in the prosthetics he would wear for the commercial shoot. “It took me a two-and-a-half to three-hour process to get it right the first time, and we just loved it,” he recalls. “Once we got down to the face and what it was, and we had that prosthetic over my nose and mouth, I asked if I could be alone. My grin told me who wanted to be.” He came to see The Grinch as someone who is “just irritated, mildly irritated,” and he sent a photo of himself to his wife, who added that she saw the character as someone she could get along with, despite his inherent sense of irritability.
In recent years, Walmart has tried to draw attention to Black Friday and holiday shopping by evoking famous movies or TV shows. The company has launched campaigns that reunite actors from the hit “Mean Girls” or the cult favorite “Office Space.” Last year, it debuted a 10-part “series” of commercials announcing great bargains available in stores, enlisting actors like Taye Diggs, Lisa Rinna, Ian Somerhalder, Anthony Ramos, Chad Michael Murray, Jake Shane and Goggins to take part in vignettes meant to remind viewers of video favorites like “Bridgerton,” “Yellowstone,” “Friday Night Lights” or “Vampire Diaries.”
But the real stars of the campaigns are the deals. Walmart plans to unveil a 10-in-1 gaming table set that will retail for $149.99, down from its original price of $381.99; a Flashforge Adventurer 3D printer selling for $229 instead of $799; and an iHome towel warmer listed for $34.24
Goggins is doing more and more work for major advertisers, including GoDaddy and PepsiCo’s Doritos. At an earlier point in his career, the actor says, he was “afraid” to participate in advertising. Over time, he says he’s learned that he can put his own spin on the project — something he discovered after a conversation with actor Samuel L. Jackson, who has done work for Capital One, Adidas and the energy company Vattenfall.
Jackson told Goggins that when it came to commercial work, he would “stand in front of a mirror” and figure out how to deliver the message in his own unique way. And that is “my strength,” says Goggins, “not to play into someone else’s idea of the way they communicate with the audience, but to the way I would do it.
Would Goggins be willing to play the character again if Walmart needs him? “I enjoyed playing against him so much that I didn’t want it to end,” he says, but such a decision “is way above my pay grade.”
Y
