The director of the “Melania” documentary was also behind the Mike Tyson ad that aired during the Super Bowl promoting the government’s Make America Healthy Again agenda on Sunday evening.
Brett Ratner directed the 30-second black-and-white ad, which featured the former heavyweight champion exhorting Americans to eat healthier and condemning processed foods.
Ratner, who also directed the “Rush Hour” franchise, has come under renewed fire recently for allegations of sexual misconduct and assault and for appearing in the Epstein files. Ratner appears in more than a dozen photos in the Epstein files, sitting on a couch with the late Jeffrey Epstein and other redacted individuals; he also appears in emails in which his attendance at events with Epstein is discussed.
Ratner has denied the misconduct allegations against him and has not replied to MS NOW’s requests for comment about his appearances in the Epstein files.
His latest ad begins with Tyson, 59, remembering his sister, Denise, who he says “died of obesity at 25” because of a heart attack. Tyson then pivots to addressing his own history of unhealthy eating.
“I was so fat and nasty I would eat anything,” he says. “I was like 345 pounds; [I would eat] a quart of ice cream every hour.”
Tyson adds that he was consumed with “self-hate” and had suicidal ideation while he was overweight.
“We’re the most powerful country in the world, and we have the most obese, fudgy people,” he says, before noisily biting into an apple. “Something has to be done about processed food in this country.”
A banner that claims “processed food kills” flashes on the screen, before another directs viewers to “eat real food” and visit realfood.gov, a federal website that promotes the tenets of the MAHA agenda, spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The ad concludes with Tyson and his son crunching apples.
The ad was reportedly paid for by the MAHA Center, a nonprofit closely aligned with Kennedy that emphasizes healthy eating to reduce chronic disease and bring down health care costs. Tony Lyons, the group’s leader, told The New York Times that “billionaires” helped fund the ad, but he declined to name names. He also said the ad would be part of a broader campaign featuring signs saying “processed food kills” plastered on taxicabs across the country.
The new effort has attracted criticism from representatives of the food industry, who have said the ad is “seeding fear and misinformation that is in no way based in science,” as Melissa Hockstad, president and CEO of the Consumer Brands Association, told Bloomberg on Friday. Nutritionists also told the Times the fat-shaming message of the ad and its focus on personal responsibility were unlikely to be effective in bringing about the kind of large-scale changes the MAHA movement seeks.
Kennedy, for his part, called it “the most important message in Super Bowl history.”
At an event sponsored by the right-wing Heritage Foundation on Monday, Kennedy said the directors spent eight hours trying to get Tyson to read from a script for the ad before abandoning it and allowing him to ad-lib.
In a social media post, Ratner called Tyson his “friend of 40 years,” adding that he was “so proud of Mike for sharing his personal story with the world and delivering the most important message in Super Bowl history.”
“Gratitude to @SecKennedy for prioritizing our country’s disease epidemic and how real food is a big part of the solution,” Ratner wrote. “Our nation’s health is our real wealth.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.