Tony Hale Recalls Receiving the Phone Call to Appear With ‘Queen’ Beyoncé in Super Bowl Ad

Tony Hale is no stranger to working alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest stars thanks to his work in projects like Veep, Arrested Development, Inside Out and more. However, it’s not every day you get to star alongside Beyoncé in a Super Bowl ad.

The actor appeared in the iconic Verizon 2024 Super Bowl commercial that confirmed that Bey had Cowboy Carter up her sleeves. The minute-long ad finds comedian Hale challenging Bey to do something so big, it “breaks” Verizon’s 5G internet service. To do so, she does a ton of activities like running a lemonade stand for fans, playing the saxophone, introduces her own “Beyonc-AI” technology, parodies Barbie as “Bar-Bey” and announcing her candidacy for “Beyoncé of the United States” — but nothing worked.

Bey then decided that announcing new music is the only way. “OK, they ready,” she says from a rocket ship. “Drop the new music.”

“They called me and they said, ‘Hey, do you want to be in a Super Bowl ad?’” Hale recalled of finding out about the gig with “the Queen” during a Monday night (July 22) interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and they said, ‘It’s with a music artist.’ I was like, ‘Great.’ They were like, ‘Beyoncé,’ and I was like, ‘Sorry?’”

He continued, “I finally am doing something cool that my daughter thinks is cool, but I couldn’t tell her because I signed an NDA.”

However, he still found ways to tease the appearance for his daughter. “Actually, they did these teasers beforehand of me in front of a lemonade stand and she immediately got it and was like, ‘Dad?’ And I just texted back an emoji of a bee.”

Watch the full interview below.