All those glued to March Madness have a good shot at catching a glimpse of Hampton Roads’ “Bad Granny,” Mary Puggioni.
The 84-year-old Italian grandmother, who lives in Williamsburg, has become a social media sensation in recent years with her homemade videos and not-so-subtle sexual innuendos attracting 1.3 million followers to her TikTok account, “grannysoffherrocker.”
She is now the star of a Kentucky Fried Chicken “Chizza” commercial seen during basketball games. The corporate payday, she said, has changed her life.
“I’m starting to make money. And I’m 84!”
She’s treating her children, grandchildren, a few nieces and nieces’ children to a “huge” family reunion trip this summer. The 26 family members will stay with Puggioni at the Yorktown Beach Hotel when she celebrates her 85th birthday in July.
“I’m not struggling anymore,” Puggioni said. “I’m not living on my Social Security check anymore. Now I’m having fun.”
She is part of a trend in U.S. advertising: a social media star tapped to endorse consumer products. While her Chizza commercial is relatively short, the 14-second ad takes advantage of Bad Granny’s charm.
The commercial starts with a young man opening a white and red KFC box and picking up a piece of Chizza: Two fried chicken filets topped with marinara sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni.
A narrator poses a question:
“Is KFC’s new Chizza, pizza?”
Puggioni, wearing a burgundy tracksuit, appears with an inquisitive expression.
“Fried chicken?” she asks in her thick New York accent, rolls her eyes and declares grumpily, “That’s a pizza!”
“That’s right,” the narrator says. “It’s not pizza. It’s Chizza. Only at KFC.”
In 2019, Puggioni moved from Brooklyn to live in Hampton with her daughter Nanci Caceda. They made their first TikTok video in 2021 to positive reactions, and Caceda kept filming and posting videos of her mom. Puggioni grumbles at her daughter in many of the videos, asks to be let alone, and, in others, models bikinis and makes lighthearted sexual references.
In one, she is presented with a sub sandwich. The clip’s title tag reads: “Is that a footlong subway sandwich or are you just happy to see me? #BadGranny.”
“What is that, 12 inches?” she says, looking at the camera. “I can’t handle 12 inches.”
The mother-daughter duo racked nearly 80,000 followers within their first several months on TikTok.
Last spring, Puggioni appeared on television journalist Chris Cuomo’s “NewsNation” show. The segment opened with Cuomo — who Puggioni believes is a gorgeous “Italian stallion” — asking his audience, “Do you want to meet my TikTok crush?”
Cuomo interviewed Puggioni after the Hampton home was severely damaged in a storm that summer. They moved into a new home in Williamsburg on Jan. 1.
Three days later, they got a call from KFC asking Puggioni for a few samples of herself saying: “Fried chicken? That’s pizza.”
Puggioni was notified Jan. 7 that she’d gotten the gig. On Jan. 9, she and Caceda were seated in first-class seats on a flight to Los Angeles. They were picked up by a limo and checked into a fancy hotel, Puggioni said.
“I felt like a celebrity.”
The first costume selected by wardrobe people was simply not her style.
“First they wanted her to look like an old Italian nonna, kind of what my nonna looked like wearing a housecoat and apron all day long,” Caceda recalled.
The costume department pulled a different outfit: a burgundy tracksuit with white stripes.
“I thought I was getting a role in ‘The Sopranos,’ ” Puggioni said.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
