There's a new Colonel in town! Just a few months after hiring Saturday Night Live alum Darrell Hammond to play Colonel Sanders, KFC is shaking things up again. The fast-food giant has hired another ex-SNL star, Norm Macdonald, to play "the REAL Colonel Sanders" in a new set of ads. Because Hammond was just an imposter, obviously.
Macdonald's inaugural ad — posted to YouTube on Aug. 16 — opens with him watching Hammond as the Colonel on TV, then angrily standing up to take back his identity.
"Hey, that's not the real Colonel Sanders!" he declares. "I'm the real Colonel Sanders. And this is how you sell chicken."
From there, the ad gets a little meta, with Macdonald poking fun at the idea that there is or ever could be a "real" Colonel Sanders. "Howdy, folks, it's me, the real Colonel Sanders," he says with a winking shrug.
Subsequent ads take a similar tongue-in-cheek approach. In one, appropriately titled "Celebrity Colonel," Macdonald jokes about Kentucky Fried Chicken's use of famous comedians to sell their food.
"It's come to my attention that there's an imposter Colonel out there. He's trying to be me. That's crazy," he quips. "They can't just grab some super funny Hollywood actor, throw a white suit on him, and try to pass him off as the real Colonel Sanders. And I should know, because I am Colonel Sanders."
And just in case you didn't get the joke the first time, he drives it home with one final punch line. "I'm Colonel Sanders," he says, shaking his head no. "I know that."
