Oh Tom, you know just how a girl likes her vitamins.
Renowned Avenger frenemy and posh hottie Tom Hiddleston has joined the ranks of Western celebrities flogging products for Asian markets with a new ad for Centrum multivitamins that’s either endearing, or unnerving, depending on how you feel about finding Tom Hiddleston cooking you breakfast while gently reminding you to get your full daily dose of magnesium.
The mainland-targeted ad, recently posted to the actor’s Weibo channel, is shot in such a way as to put viewers in the shoes — or comfy terrycloth robe, as it were — of Hiddleston’s girlfriend (wife? booty call? it’s unclear, really).
In it, said female companion awakes and comes downstairs to find Hiddleston, sharply dressed and wearing an apron, standing at the stove preparing a godawful-looking healthy breakfast of vegetables with a heart-shaped fried egg.
“Pepper on top, right?” Hiddleston asks, ever attentive to your wants and needs.
“Oh,” he adds, in the only line delivered in Mandarin, “and your Centrum.”
With that, Hiddleston places the bottle of Centrum Women in front of you, looks at you like he’s the luckiest man in the world, and says: “You look great.”
But, alas, the idyll is interrupted by Hiddleston’s packed schedule — he’ll be busy for a few weeks, he says, “but I’ll make it up to you soon, I promise.”
As Robert Frost said, nothing gold can stay, and so, with a look and wave, Hiddleston’s gone, out of our lives again.
But he’ll be back. He promises.
Now the Centrum Women is all we have to remember him by.
Of course, Hiddleston isn’t the first Western celebrity to appear in an ad for an Asian market. The practice is so time-honored that it served as a plot point in the Bill Murray-Scarlett Johansson classic Lost in Translation.
And weird as it is, Hiddleston’s turn isn’t the weirdest — not by a long shot. That accolade goes to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Enjoy.
Reader Interactions