Why Brie Larson Received So Much Hate After Starring In A Nissan Commercial

Academy Award-winning actor Brie Larson is no stranger to controversy, like when she was cast as Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the character's titular movie coming out in 2019. The following year, Larson faced more backlash after starring in a Nissan commercial that some people thought was too divisive and feminist.

It was a part of the company's new "Refuse to Compromise" ad series. In a press release about the project in March 2020, Larson said: "It's great to partner with Nissan on this inspiring campaign which is essentially about advocating for yourself and believing that you deserve a seat at the table. It's a powerful message in a bottle that I'm so proud to be a part of."

The commercial starts with a male boss telling a female employee, "I'm going to hold on promoting you this quarter, cool?" Then as the employee seems about to agree to no promotion, Larson pulls up, gets her in the car, and tells her, "If this Nissan Sentra isn't going to compromise, why should you?"

The commercial seems to be a relatively innocuous way to show off the Nissan Sentra's features, but some people got really mad about what they saw as a feminist agenda within the commercial. Brie Larson's "Refuse to Compromise" ad was first promoted on Twitter, now known as X, and YouTube two days before International Women's Day, and the negative response was so strong that the company had to shut off the comments section — the original YouTube video seems to have been taken down, presumably because of the backlash against it and the overwhelming downvotes it was receiving. Then Nissan's stock tanked with people seeming to blame Larson's commercial for the dip.

The car company released a follow-up video, which has also since been made private on Nissan's YouTube page but is still available online, in which Larson was asked to talk about the ad and its message. That didn't seem to make things much better when it came to Larson being perceived by some as a misandrist, and a point of irritation may have been when Larson was asked about what it's like working in a male-dominated field and how she wanted to try and get more women involved on set so that it reflected the demographics of the larger world around her. Or it could have been when she said the commercial was, "about sisterhood, pumping each other up, community, and allowing each other to have the opportunity to believe in ourselves."

While the original post from Nissan with the ad on X and YouTube was taken down, Brie Larson's post of the ad that calls for equal treatment is still available on X. In her post with the ad, she wrote, "So much fun creating this campaign for a car that refuses to compromise." Some of the comments there give a hint at the backlash that the Nissan post got. One person wrote, "Seen the dislikes for the ad? You just ruined Nissan." Another took a stereotypical shot at women in general and said, "Terrible commercial. The rear auto-braking portion confirms that women cannot drive. lol."

In another reply to the ad, someone posted on X: "Boy, are you out of touch. People in the West are sick and tired of this PC nonsense. Didn't you learn from the Election of Trump, the Brexit vote or the rejection of Brie Larson's misandric attitude? You're gonna take a big hit: 'Go woke, go broke.'"

Larson has been a vocal and unapologetic advocate for sexual assault survivors, particularly during the #MeToo and Time's Up movements. That seems to have been problematic for some to the point where they took offense to her starring in the Nissan ad. Despite the negative response to that first ad with Larson, Nissan stuck with her, and she's still promoting their new cars.