It’s one of the early aughts’ most famous reality TV fowl ups. And now Jessica Simpson is showing she’s a good sport by sending up the time she asked then-husband Nick Lachey “is this chicken that I have, or is this fish?” on the 2003 premiere episode of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica while digging into a bowl of Chicken of the Sea.
The now-43-year-old star proves she knows that Chicken of the Sea is actually tuna in a new ad for the brand as part of the “It’s the One For Me” campaign in which she co-stars with her 11-year-old daughter, Maxwell “Maxi” Drew.
The spot finds mother and daughter chilling on the couch as the singer-turned-fashion-designer’s eldest asks why her mom is eating food out of a packet of lemon garlic wild caught light tuna. “It’s called Chicken of the Sea, but it’s not really chicken, it’s tuna. So don’t get confused by it,” Simpson counsel’s her first born with a wisdom born of two decades of hindsight — and countless memes.
“Who would ever get confused by that?” Maxi asks incredulously. “No one?” Jessica responds before a long, awkward pause broken by an “as if” assurance of “not your mom.” Cue Maxi’s maximum eye-roll and Jessica’s mortified thousand-yard stare clearly recalling her not-finest TV moment.
Back in the day, Lachey responded to his wife’s response by sweetly explaining, “Chicken of the Sea is the brand. You know, ’cause a lot of people eat tuna, just like a lot of people eat chicken. Chicken of the Sea.”
“Oh, I understand now. I read it wrong,” Jessica said back then.
After divorcing Lachey in 2006, Simpson married husband Eric Johnson in 2014 and the couple also share son Ace Knute, 10 and daughter Birdie Mae, 4. In November, Simpson said she’s been working on her first new original album since 2008’s Do You Know.
Watch the Simpsons settle the chicken-or-fish debate conclusively below.
