If you think you recognize the guy who’s co-starring in new CBS drama “Battle Creek,” you do. But maybe not because of all his past TV and movie work.
Dean Winters, who plays an Everyman detective in the cop show that CBS is holding for midseason, has been much better known in the last couple of years as Mayhem, the catalyst for trouble in a series of ads for Allstate.
He’s crashed cars, crumbled houses and just generally created all the problems Allstate wants to insure us against.
Winters, a New Yorker, has had a long career on TV shows like “30 Rock,” “Oz,” “Rescue Me” and “Law & Order: SVU.”
But in the last four years, he’s become one of the Big Three of TV ad characters, alongside the Geico lizard and Stephanie Courtney, the woman in white in the Progressive ads.
David Shore, showrunner for “Battle Creek,” acknowledged that Winters brings his own brand to the production.
“I suppose that is there,” he told TV writers. “There isn’t a lot we can do about it.”
He said Winters is still the right character for “Battle Creek.”
