Without any dialogue, a nearly two-minute film shows what it is like for an African American male to experience racial bias throughout his day. Everyday moments, like eating at a diner or shopping at a store, become fraught with micro-aggression as white people he encounters give him various degrees of suspicious or hostile glances. The intimate and unnerving portrayal begins in the morning when he opens his eyes and follows him throughout his day. When his son greets a white classmate in the backseat of a car, her mother rolls up the window. At the pool with his son, other hesitant swimmers glare. At a high-end store, salesclerks and a security guard eye him as he makes his way through the store. At a diner, a white couple chooses a distant seat. The spot ends with the man entering a courtroom, as a judge.

Procter & Gamble had previously demonstrated its commitment to combatting racial bias with “The Talk,” an Emmy-award winning film that addressed the emotional moment when a Black mother has to warn her child about the dangers of racism. The ad, challenged for not including black men, led to the creation of “The Look.” “The Look” is about a common occurrence in the life of an American Black man, the suspicious looks one gets when going through everyday life. The film was made at a time when the nation was reeling from the shooting deaths of unarmed black men by police and a year before mass protests over the death of George Floyd. The film crystalized what an average day is like for a Black man in America today. First released online and later broadcast on TV, the film aired on Oprah Winfrey’s two-night town hall special addressing race in America.

The characters in the film—from the protagonist and his son to the white people he encounters throughout the day—needed to be able to convey a host of emotions without ever saying a word, a challenge for any actor to achieve. Careful consideration was made to cast a lead actor who did not perpetuate any particular stereotype but represented the average African American man and his everyday experiences.