Don't you just hate it when people keep bringing up the unfortunate Burger King ad you starred in over a decade ago? That's the situation facing Mary J. Blige, whose 2012 controversy "still isn't a laughing matter" to her.
"Crispy chicken… fresh lettuce… three cheeses," she croons in the 2012 ad, singing, of course, about Burger King's new Crispy Chicken Wrap. If that all sounds like fun, the backlash wasn't. After a Whopper of a controversy, the ad was pulled, and Burger King issued an apology to Mary J. Blige.
The issue was the apparent perpetuating of racial stereotypes. The ad "reminded many of us that stereotypes of dancing, singing, and chicken-loving black people still remain prevalent in the hearts and minds of advertisers," said Black Enterprise writer Janell Hazelwood at the time.
And now, Mary J. Blige has reflected on the debacle, telling YouTuber Scott Evans that it left her "deeply affected". "It's still not a laughing matter to me," she told him in a new interview (below). "The bottom line is, my fans were confused. The real, true fans. I didn't really know what was going on. I had bad representation, bad management, bad everything. Everybody dropped the ball, and I'm holding everything. That was a learning curve, but still not funny."
At the time, Blige said in a statement to TMZ that the ad was not edited in the way she had been expecting. "I agreed to be a part of a fun and creative campaign that was supposed to feature a dream sequence. Unfortunately, that's not what was happening in that clip."
