Ashley Graham thinks the now-infamous Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner could have been stopped. “My team probably would have nipped it in the bud before anything happened,” Graham, 29, told a caller on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Sunday, June 25. “It’s unfortunate that that happened, but hey, she’s moving forward.”
In the controversial protest-themed commercial, Jenner, 21, left a photo shoot to join a rally in the streets. The supermodel proceeded to offer a riot officer a Pepsi can, which subsequently stopped the demonstration and caused the crowd to start cheering.
The commercial, which was pulled one day after its debut, enraged many viewers who felt it made light of social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter as a means to sell their product. Sources told Us Weekly at the time that Jenner felt “horrible” amid the ordeal.
Kim Kardashian echoed that her younger sister felt badly about the project during a May 28 appearance on WWHL. “She totally understood at the end of the day, and she felt really awful for it,” Kardashian, 36, said at the time. “She just wants to move on from it.”
“I think anytime someone does anything, they don’t have bad intentions of doing it a certain way, especially because Kendall is so sensitive,” The Selfish author continued. “She would never mean for anyone to perceive anything in a negative way.”
Graham, however, hinted that the crew behind the shoot should have had more of a hand in stopping the commercial from filming. “I was very shocked,” Graham told Cohen on the Bravo show. “I was very surprised that no one said, ‘Hey, this looks like a bad idea right here.’”
