Why Lee From A Recipe For Seduction Looks So Familiar
Today marks the premiere of Lifetime's holiday movie collaboration with KFC. Some might call A Recipe for Seduction a 15-minute long commercial posing as a film. According to Time Out, Mario Lopez plays a reimagined Colonel Harlan Sanders who falls in love with his employer's daughter, despite her mother's intentions to marry her off to another man who seems ready to take out his finger-lickin' competitor. It's a parody described in a press release as full of "mystery, suspense, deception, 'fowl' play and at the heart of it all... love and fried chicken" (via CNN). It's accompanied by a special promotion with Uber Eats. It's going to work for KFC, probably.
If you want to know what happens but can't bring yourself to watch it, here is a brief piece covering A Recipe for Seduction on Lifetime Uncorked by Patrick Serrano. If, however, you are watching and looking past Harlan Sanders, Jessica Mancera, and Billy Garibaldi to stare at Jessica's friend Lee – just Lee – as you try to figure out where you have seen him before, Lee is played by the comedian Martin Mandela Morrow (via IMDb).
Ok, but who is Martin Mandela Morrow?
For those who do not delve into the ins and outs of stand up comedy, Martin Mandela Morrow may be most familiar as an actor who plays small parts. He has appeared in things like a bit with Jimmy Kimmel in which Morrow teaches Kimmel how to make peanut butter on a spoon, the Progressive commercial in which a middle-aged life coach helps younger, new homeowners, including Morrow, overcome the transformation that turned them into their parents, and now KFC's A Recipe for Seduction.
These appearances mark definite progress in a stand up's life, as Morrow explained to the Trussville Tribune (the news source of his hometown Trussville, Alabama) in May of this year. As he promoted his new comedy album Magic of the City, he explained, "I would have never expected in a billion years that, 16-year-old me living Trussville, would one day be living in LA, with a dog, doing stand-up and with an album on the iTunes charts." He also opens acts for Dane Cook, Eric Andre, and Tim Allen and has been experimenting with scriptwriting and a possible half-hour animated project. Hopefully, we will continue to grow familiar with Morrow.