Did Mikhail Gorbachev Really Star in a Pizza Hut Commercial in the ’90s? (Video)
thewrap.comMikhail Gorbachev has died at age 91, social media revived a Pizza Hut commercial from 1998 with the former Soviet Union leader dining out at the American chain in Moscow.
But was it really him or a lookalike?Yes, that really was Gorbachev and his granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya in the ad, which was filmed in December 1997 and aired internationally — but not in Russia — in January 1998.
As he told The New York Times in 1997, “If my name works for the benefit of consumers, to hell with it — I can risk it.” He was rumored to be paid $1 million for the ad, money he put into the Gorbachev Foundation.
In the commercial, Gorbachev and his granddaughter enter a Pizza Hut in Moscow’s Red Square. At a nearby table, a father and son argue over whether Gorbachev, who resigned in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union, had helped or hurt Russia.
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