Tom Segura Starred in Subway Ads as Jared’s Derelict Brother
Subway and weight-loss-champ-turned-sex-criminal Jared Fogle kept a lot of secrets, but one of the less despicable ones was this: Not all of Subway’s sandwiches were low-fat specials. To promote less healthy options, an advertising agency came up with the idea to hire slob Tom Segura as Fogle’s sidekick.
For Segura, then an up-and-coming stand-up comedian, the job seemed like his big break. “I booked a commercial campaign, a national string of commercials, with Jared from Subway,” he told Stephen Colbert in 2018. “It’s so much worse than you think it is.”
Jared, a beloved sandwich spokesperson before the truth came out, “was at the peak of his thing, pulling up his pants,” Segura explained. “And they realize that they can only advertise healthy subs with Jared. They’re like, we need to be able to advertise unhealthy subs. So we need to find someone that people would believe eats like a trash can.”
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Segura has slimmed down some over the past 15 years, but at the time, his physical appearance fit the bill. “The idea was that Jared would be, like, ‘You should get the turkey sub!’ And I would be, like, ‘What about the meatball sub? That’s good!’ And you would have both subs being consumed.”
Fogle was a super-celebrity at this point. The ad guys told Segura to buckle in because he was about to blow up as well. “You are going to be so well recognized because these (commercials) are going to air all the time,” Segura was told. “And there are going to be new ones all the time.”
But the ads wouldn’t feature Jared with real-life Tom Segura. “We don't want you to be you,” Subway told the comic. “The campaign is that you’re Jared’s brother. So he’s straitlaced Jared, and you’re his derelict brother, Jerome.”
Segura didn’t mind going by a different name, but the idea of playing a dude named “Jerome” didn’t feel quite right. “I told them, I’m sorry to be insensitive, but I kind of think Jerome is a Black guy’s name.”
Colbert asked the show’s resident Black guy, bandleader Jon Batiste, to weigh in. “Does that strike you as a Black guy's name, Jon?”
Batiste shrugged. “That could be any guy’s name,” he said, suggesting “Tyrone” as a more obvious choice for a Black moniker. (Tyrone is Colbert’s middle name.)
Regardless of Batiste’s opinion, the ad guys considered Segura’s suggestion. On the first day of filming, the agency execs approached the comic. “We talked about it and we think you’re right,” they told him. “So you have a new name, and it’s Jermaine.”
“Now that’s a Black name!” said Batiste.
Why haven’t we seen the Jared and Jermaine commercials? Segura says he shot a bunch of them, alongside plans for a nationwide publicity tour. “They’re like, ‘You’re going to travel the country with Jared. He’s going to hold up his enormous pants and be like, ‘You can be like me!’ And then you’re going to walk on stage with mouthfuls of food.”
“They never aired,” Segura concluded, never explaining if the agency reconsidered the appeal of Trash-Eating Jermaine or if Fogle’s legal troubles derailed the campaign. But the ads exist, he claimed. “Somebody has them.”
