Miles and Keleigh Teller choose joy in new Super Bowl ad

By JONATHAN LANDRUM JR.
AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With a new Super Bowl ad, “Top Gun: Maverick” star Miles Teller and his wife, Keleigh, are trying to remind viewers that sometimes in life’s trying moments, you can choose to make the best of things.

The couple star in a commercial for Bud Light, where they dance to customer-service hold music. Miles said the ad’s message to choose joy appealed to him.

“Obviously there’s a lot of stuff that’s kind of going on that can be really frustrating, but I think you can choose happiness,” he said. “You can choose enjoyment.”

“They said, ‘Look, we really just want this to feel like a slice of life moment,” said the actor. “We both felt like this would be something that we’d be proud to show our kids.” They also kept casting in the family by using their actual dog for cute reaction shots of their antics.

Miles’ dance moves should come as no surprise. He appeared in the 2011 “Footloose” remake, in the role originated by Chris Penn.

Keleigh, on the other hand, confesses to feeling “super nervous” beforehand but says they were given “a lot of freedom to just play around. I really enjoyed the process.”

Besides bragging rights about appearing in a Super Bowl ad — “they’re the Super Bowl of commercials,” says Miles — he hopes an additional perk would be a lifetime supply of Bud Light, which hasn’t been confirmed but he’s still hoping comes to fruition. “I said ‘Look, guys, we don’t need to write this down in a contract or anything, but I feel like it was kind of like implied that I would never pay for a Bud Light again,’ which is perfectly fine by me.”

As a self-professed “diehard birds fan,” he’s also invested in the match-up between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, which Keleigh says makes for “a big week” in their house, describing it as “a whole situation.”

Up next is the Oscars, where “Top Gun: Maverick” is nominated for best picture. Miles says he believes “100%” that Tom Cruise should have been nominated in the best actor category.

“We give actors so much credit in movies for performing skills, for playing instruments or singing or gaining weight and losing weight and the skills that Tom is putting on display in ‘Top Gun’ and so many of his movies — that’s a product of thousands of hours practiced. I think we don’t realize how much work and effort goes into that.”