Monday, February 05, 2007

Nicolas Coster's latest work is "Super"!

You can't call his life idle -- you can even find him on "American Idol"! (Sorta!) One of Nicolas Coster's many current projects is a Coca-Cola commercial airing during ABC's "American Idol" -- and during yesterday's Super Bowl!

BRBTV caught up with Coster, our own enigmatic Lionel Lockridge of "Santa Barbara," by phone on Saturday to learn more about the commercial, and the other stuff he's got going on right now.

"It’s a guy in an old folks’ home sitting there just staring at the wall," he told BRB about the ad, which is also posted on Coke's website. "A young woman comes up and offers me a coke. I say I’ve never had one. I drink it, and I say, ‘I wonder what else I’ve never done.’ I call the woman I’ve been in love with for 40 years, and she hangs up on me." Coster goes on to describe the montage of high-speed, dangerous stuff his character gets into, like high-diving into a pool, racing a motorcycle and getting a tattoo. But it gets even more interesting ...

"In the European version, the racy version, I go and kiss the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and get chased out by security, then I go to a nudist colony, then I end up in bed with two 60-year-old twins, two beautiful women who happen to be twins. ... I’ve gotten calls from all over the world saying, ‘My god, that’s the best commercial I’ve ever seen!’ Even my agent said, 'That’s the best commercial I’ve ever seen.’ It’s like a whole story of what can be. Just because you got gray hair, don’t pack it up, you know?"

Coster said the Coke commercial took six days to shoot and will also go into Coca-Cola's museum at its headquarters in Atlanta.

Just this past Friday night, Coster finished shooting another commercial, this time for American Century Investments. "I was filming 12 hours a day for two days straight," he said. "It was all me. The whole thing was about this really nasty head of a law film. Then he gets into an elevator and changes into a rabbit costume. ... He ends up in a children’s ward of challenged children, entertaining them. The entire commercial was improvised. I didn’t have a line of text. I made up the whole thing. It was wild."

He went on, "We shot that here in L.A., in a building downtown. Then we shot at a hospital, which, only in a developed country would we have a deserted hospital. It probably didn’t fit the new earthquake standards; they probably had to close it. I can’t think of any other reason for a hospital to be deserted in L.A."

Coster noted that his work through the years with challenged children certainly helped for the commercial.. "They couldn’t believe how smoothly it went with the children. I’ve worked with children through Special Olympics."

Coster also works with the disabled through his diving program, which you can check out at ChallengesFoundation.org. You can tell this work is close to his heart. Coster has been teaching scuba-diving for more than 25 years and even taught his "SB" costar John Allen Nelson (the original Warren Lockridge) to dive. He said he currently has just three divers in the Challenges program and works on an 18-foot boat. This worthwhile organization is waiting for some money to come in. "We’ve been doing it for 20 years now. When I had money, I used to put a lot of money into it. I used to put about fifty grand a year into it."

BRBTV salutes Coster and his good work. Tune in tomorrow for news on another one of Coster's current projects ... which also just happens to involve another one of our BRBTV stars ...

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