Spike Lee thinks Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi advert was "horrible".
The award-winning movie-maker has blasted the model and the drinks company for attempting to profit from the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that Kendall was a completely inappropriate person to cast in the controversial commercial.
Spike explained: "When you deal with diversity and you don’t have anybody in the room who looks like what you’re trying to do, then you have a fiasco like the Pepsi spot."
In the advert – which was scrapped shortly after it first aired – Kendall walked away from a photoshoot and into the middle of a protest, where she appeared to calm tensions between the public and the police by handing a can of Pepsi to an officer.
But according to Spike, the advert undermined the Black Lives Matter movement.
He told Variety: "It was horrible. The pregnant woman in Seattle got shot the other day. Philando [Castile], the whole world saw him get killed on Facebook, and the cop walked, and Pepsi did something like [that]. Don’t get me started.
"That was a complete appropriation of Black Lives Matter, and Black Lives Matter is not a joke. Black people getting shot down left and right, and cops are walking and they are going to make a commercial out of that?"
The ‘Do the Right Thing’ star said that companies like Pepsi should aspire to have a more diverse workforce because it can avoid awkward instances, like with the commercial, and it can also help to grow profits.
Spike – who is known for his outspoken nature – reflected: "There’s been several studies that show the more diverse your business is, the more profitable it is. You’d think that would be the number one incentive."
Spike Lee blasts Kendall Jenner’s controversial advert
