AT&T’s Lily credits Flo from Progressive for helping her deal with online sexual harassment
Flo’s got you covered.
Milana Vayntrub, the actress who portrays AT&T’s spokesperson Lily Adams, revealed Stephanie Courtney, who famously plays Progressive’s Flo, helped Vayntrub navigate the online harassment she received about her body.
Vayntrub has portrayed AT&T’s Lily on and off since 2013. Courtney has appeared as Flo for more than 15 years.
In a new interview with the New York Times, Vayntrub, 36, recalled Courtney, 53, reaching out to her in the summer of 2020 when she started reappearing in AT&T’s ads for the first time since 2017.
Upon her comeback, social media users started referring to Vayntrub as “Mommy Milkers” due to her breasts, she remembers. The outlet claims people spammed AT&T’s social media posts with “lewd declarations and emojis of glasses of milk.”
“Our real world was so small that the internet felt like everything,” Vayntrub told The Times.
At the time, AT&T released a statement condemning the harassment, and the @ATT account replied to offensive comments on social media, “We don’t condone sexual harassment of employees in the workplace or on our social channels.”
Vayntrub also addressed the comments herself in an Instagram Live, saying the viral spread of her personal photos online “hurt my feelings” and was bringing up “a lot of feelings of sexual assault.”
But Vayntrub also heard from her fellow spokesperson, Courtney, which made her feel “like there were people on my team,” she said.
According to The Times, “Courtney was empathetic; Vayntrub had been chosen, essentially at random, to receive a blitzkrieg of violent and sexual taunts from legions of strangers for doing a job essentially identical to her own. Vayntrub recalled that Courtney was a good listener.”
The Post has contacted reps for Vayntrub and Courtney for comment.
Vayntrub also directs the AT&T commercials she stars in, and in 2021, addressed viewers’ speculation that she was purposely hiding her body.
“Been getting a lot of ‘Why are they placing her body like that in those ads?’ Well, I direct the ads. I place myself like that,” she tweeted. “And it’s because of the thousands of unwelcome comments I receive about my body. You’ve lost the privilege of looking at it until I feel safe again.”
Outside of AT&T campaigns, Vayntrub starred in the short film “Pickled Herring” in 2023, and appeared in Kevin Hart and John Travolta’s action comedy series “Die Hart.”
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