Despite the New England Patriots having a losing season this year, 32-year-old Worcester native Adrien M. Mompoint is on a winning streak playing a fictional member of the NFL team's locker room staff.
Mompoint plays Frankie Thompson, “the best-dressed assistant locker room manager in the (National Football) League,” in a commercial for Downy Defy laundry detergent, which Patriots quarterback Cam Newton has a cameo at the very end.
The Downy spot was Mompoint’s first speaking role in a commercial and he envisions it as his crowning achievement in acting so far.
“I’ve had speaking roles in films but I feel like this is bigger than that, just 'cause the commercial is national,” he said.
In the 30-second TV ad, Mompoint is dressed as Newton, complete with leopard pants, a colorful scarf around his head and neck, and topped off with one of Cam’s eye-catching, one-of-a-kind Meshika hats.
“I’m here to help you protect your clothes from getting damaged in the wash,” Mompoint’s character says in the commercial. “That’s why I use new Downy Defy. It helps stop stretching, fading and fuzzing.”
Then, the commercial cuts to Newton, wearing the same lid and leopard pants as Mompoint’s character, who questions, “We have an assistant locker room manager?”
Initially, Boston Casting was looking for a 6-foot-5 actor for stand-in work, but unforeseen circumstances during the coronavirus pandemic turned out to work in Mompoint’s favor.
“I’m like, ‘Hmm, 6-5, all right.’ I’m thinking, maybe, I’m standing in for an athlete or something. I thought it might be for David Ortiz because I’m his special stand-in. I’ve done it three times,” Mompoint said. “And they said it was for Cam Newton. I said, ‘Oh, that’s awesome.’”
Filmed in mid-October in a studio in Allston, which was made to look like the Patriots’ locker room, the commercial started airing in the first week of November and is still making the rounds.
Arriving at the shoot, Mompoint was told there had been scheduling conflicts and the director of the commercial wanted to speak to him.
“The director spoke to me on Zoom because he was in Canada and he couldn’t cross the border because of COVID laws,” Mompoint said. “And, he said, ‘We would like you to do the commercial … We need you to do the commercial. You’ll do great. You have an acting background and here’s the script. We’ll find an outfit for you.’ Everything was happening so fast.”
Despite it taking eight hours to find the right outfit, Mompoint said it was an “awesome experience.”
“I’m supposed to be dressed like Cam, because his outfits are very colorful and, basically, I’m trying to look like him,” Mompoint said. “I was trying on clothes that you didn’t know existed, big hats, different shoes, tiger print sweaters, things like that .They gave me a huge trench coat, a fur coat, all sorts of stuff. You can see in the commercial, I got a lot of beads on my wrist, things like that.”
Mompoint, who gets an opportunity to show off his winning smile in the TV spot, said it wasn’t difficult to get into character.
“When they told me, they were just like, ‘Hey, basically, you’re an assistant locker room manager and you really like Cam’s outfits to the point where you are dressing like him. You think you great just like him,’” he said. “I have a great sense of humor and I said, OK, I think I know what they want. This shouldn’t be too hard. I don’t take myself seriously. And, before each take, I either do a little bit of bouncing up and down or a little dance just to get me in the groove. And the leopard print pants, you can’t be a stiff while wearing those. You know.”
Although Newton delivers the punchline at the end, the Patriots QB didn’t shoot with Mompoint, nor did the two ever meet.
“I was looking forward to meeting him,” Mompoint said. “That would have been awesome.”
Mompoint — a former football player at Holy Name Central Catholic High School and in college, and who also used to attend Patriots football camp during the Drew Bledsoe days — said it feels great to be part of the team, sort of.
As for what his friends and family think of the commercial, Mompoint said they all love it.
“My dad was the first one to see it and he was just, kind of, in his Sunday naps and he heard the commercial and he opened his eyes,” Mompoint said. “When he first looked, he just thought I was an ex-NFL player. Then, my dad said, ‘Wait a minute. Hey! That’s my son.’”
Mompoint, too, said he is happy with the end result.
“I was just like, ‘Wow! This is what they had,’ because when you’re filming something, you think you know what it may look like. But I really didn’t have an idea,” he said. “First of all, I did a lot of takes, a lot of takes. The director also let me say my own thing. We did a bunch of that. At one point, they had me moonwalking in the laundromat. I just did a bunch of different stuff but I didn’t know what it was going to look like.”
And, despite being in the middle of a pandemic and regularly wearing a mask out in public, Mompoint was recognized for the commercial spot by a CVS worker.
“He asked me, ‘What I did for work?’ and I said, ‘I was an actor.’ And, he’s like, ‘Oh, I thought you played football.’ I said, ‘I used to,’” Mompoint recalled. “And, he was like, ‘Wait a minute. Did you just do a commercial with Cam Newton?’ I was like, ‘Yes. What? Can you tell from eyes?’ because I had a mask on. And, he said, ‘No, no, no, your voice sounds familiar.’”
It’s Mompoint’s hopes that his Frankie Thompson alter-ego becomes so popular with the online- and TV-viewing consumers that he pops up again in a series of commercial spots.
Although he hasn’t heard anything yet from the Downy people, Mompoint said the laundry detergent juggernaut just gave his character, Frankie Thompson, his own Twitter account.
“A friend of mine's said, 'Hey, your character is on Twitter.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah. Cam Newton retweeted it.’ I’m like, ‘What? I’m like, ‘Get out of here!’” Mompoint said.
In addition to the commercial, Mompoint commutes back and forth from Worcester to New York City, because he’s also a big and tall model for Wilhelmina Models and has been doing a lot of catalog work for companies that include Target, Nautica and Zappos.
“Basically, you get called in. You’ll model outfits. It could be 30 outfits to, the most I have ever done is 65,’ he said. “And you have your stylist there, your make-up artist and photographer.”
Not only does he love movies (and cites Samuel L. Jackson as his favorite actor), Mompoint used to work at Showcase Cinemas North for 15 years. He also used to DJ at Maxwell’s Silverman for two years.
After taking an acting class in Boston and enjoying it, Mompoint started doing background work and continued to take more classes. On his first audition for a speaking role (in 2017’s “November Criminals.” starring Chloë Grace Moretz), he landed the part.
However, his most memorable movie job to date is “Spenser Confidential,” in which he has a fight scene with the movie’s star, Mark Wahlberg.
“Spenser Confidential” I’m proud of because I worked with the crew from late August to late December of 2018. It was the first film where I was there, probably, four or five days a week, sometimes Saturdays,” Mompoint recalled. “I had a fight scene with Mark. It was my first stunt. The fight scene is pretty awesome and I get thrown into a sink and we had to do that quite a few times and we broke six or seven sinks. And I also did stand-in work for one of the actors, Winston Duke (who played Hawk). So I was there from the beginning to the end.”
As for working with the former Marky Mark, Mompoint said the Dorchester native is a cool guy.
“Once you’ve been around him for more than four days, honestly, Mark seems just like a regular Worcester guy,” Mompoint said. “During the takes, Mark said I was doing a great job. We also talked on set, mostly about sports. He’s really a cool guy, down to earth.”
Next up, Mompoint can be seen as a soldier in a post apocalyptical future in “Mother/Android,” which reunites him with Moretz, who he worked with five year earlier in “November Criminals” and who recognized Mompoint and commented on his beard. Mompoint was clean-shaven in “November Criminals.”
As for his dream job, Mompoint, who showed off his comedic timing and star power in the Downy commercial, said he would like to star in his own sitcom.
“I think I would be pretty good at playing a stressed-out dad,” Mompoint said. “I think I could be like Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson) on 'Family Matters.'”
The Link LonkDecember 28, 2020 at 01:46AM
https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2020/12/27/local-man-does-quarterback-sneak-national-laundry-suds-commercial/3998990001/
Worcester man does quarterback sneak in national laundry suds commercial - Worcester Telegram
https://news.google.com/search?q=Laundry&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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