Super Bowl 50: Steve Harvey’s T-Mobile Ad Pokes Fun at His Miss Universe Blunder

Steve Harvey turned his pageant mistake into a T-Mobile Super Bowl ad.

ByABC News
February 7, 2016, 8:14 PM

— -- Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe blunder –- when he mistakenly crowned the wrong woman winner of the pageant -– made him the target of jokes and criticism the world over, but the comedian and talk show host turned that moment into laughs with his surprise Super Bowl commercial for T-Mobile.

The commercial that debuted during the big game Sunday pokes fun at Harvey's December hosting mistake, when he mistakenly announced that Miss Colombia had won the crown over Miss Philippines, only to reverse himself minutes later, explaining that Miss Colombia was the runner-up and Miss Philippines was the actual winner.

In the spot, he apologizes to T-Mobile customers for making a mistake, and then blames rival cell carrier Verizon for the error.

"Good Morning America" went behind the scenes with the comedian as he filmed the commercial, and he talked about the furor over his error. After all the controversy, Harvey now says he's finally able to laugh at it.

"When something major happens that's kind of negative in your life, you just have to ride the storm out, you never know how it's going to be, who ever thought that this mishap with Miss Universe would turn into a Super Bowl commercial," he said.

He added: "It was a tough thing that happened, but after a while you need to start smiling about this. ... I like T-Mobile, so I thought it would be a great idea and I liked the concept. Take a nice little dig at myself."

The spot is a play on a previous Verizon commercial that explains its rivals' performance using colorful balls. The T-Mobile spot starts out with an announcer and looks similar to the Verizon ad, but then Harvey appears and apologizes to T-Mobile customers for what he says are claims about T-Mobile's coverage based on last year's numbers.

"It says right here on the card, T-Mobile doubled their LTE coverage in the last year with more LTE towers than Verizon. T-Mobile reaches pretty much everyone they do. I’m not taking responsibility on this one. Uh-uh. Verizon got it wrong. Yes! Not me," he said in the ad.

Harvey had also showed the audience the cue card he misread at the pageant when he apologized for his mistake.