The New Colonel Sanders Is the Villain From ‘Titanic’

Will the real Colonel Sanders please stand up? KFC has tapped more than a dozen actors to play the role of its white-suited founder, and its latest selection is truly the Colonel that America deserves in 2017: the villain from Titanic, AKA actor Billy Zane.

While most people will remember Zane as the domestic-abusing wretch who tried to keep Jack and Rose apart, he’s now playing the part of the “Georgia Gold Colonel” in an ad spot promoting KFC’s new honey mustard barbecue-glazed chicken, as Adweek reports. Zane-as-Sanders is what one can only assume President Donald Trump aspires to be in his wildest fantasies: completely gilded from head to toe, with a solid gold office to match.

KFC first revived the Colonel in 2015 when it appointed Saturday Night Live alum Darrell Hammond to play the part as part of an $185 million brand revamp; he was quickly succeeded by Norm Macdonald and then Jim Gaffigan, and things have gotten progressively weirder since: Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser (AKA the loathsome Pete Campbell) briefly stepped in, and famously tanned actor George Hamilton took a turn as the “Extra Crispy Colonel” hawking fried chicken-scented sunscreen.

Though comedian David Alan Grier took to Twitter at one point to proclaim he was the the first black Colonel, that sadly turned out to be a joke. But perhaps it’s time for the fried chicken chain to bring the Colonel into the 21st century by looking beyond the realm of white male Hollywood actors.

Watch Zane try the Colonel Sanders role on for size in the ad, below:

• Billy Zane Is KFC’s Latest Celebrity Colonel [Adweek]
• KFC’s Colonel Sanders: The Man, the Myth, the Mascot [E]
• More Chain Coverage [E]