Jonathan Bennett On National Pork Month, National Mean Girls Month, His Next Film Project & “The Real Mean Girl” Dani Jordyn
October 2021 marks both National Pork Month and National Mean Girls Month, and the National Pork Board has teamed up with acclaimed actor Jonathan Bennett on a campaign related to both. The byproduct of this is a social media series hosted by Bennett titled On Wednesday We Cook Pork. The series runs every Wednesday in October on the social media accounts of Bennett and the National Pork Board, and in each episode, Bennett is joined by guest cooks Carnie Wilson or Joey Lawrence.
As random as this campaign sounds, it stems from the 1980s and 1980s, when the Pork Board ran an advertisement “Pork. The Other White Meat.” This led to many Americans cooking pork until it was rubbery and tasteless and, well, white. This new campaign from Jonathan Bennett and the Board is hoping to teach a new generation of pork lovers that the perfect shade of pork, when cooked properly, is blush pink. And interestingly, all of the recipes from this campaign were adapted from Bennett’s Burn Cookbook: The Unofficial Cookbook For Mean Girls Fans. Why Carnie Wilson and Joey Lawrence, you ask? Because while some things — like “Pork. The Other White Meat.” — belong in the past, Wilson and Lawrence remain treasures in 2021, literally decades after first finding international fame.
On October 12, 2021, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jonathan Bennett via Zoom, as embedded below. Beyond this campaign and the Burn Cookbook, we also spoke about Bennett’s next film project and what he thinks about wrestling star “The Real Mean Girl” Dani Jordyn. More on Bennett, his cookbook and/or his work with the National Pork Board can be found by clicking here, here and here.