Bay Area friends answer casting call, join Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show as bushes

By Sara Donchey

The bushes that surrounded global superstar Bad Bunny during his record-breaking Super Bowl halftime performance at Levi’s Stadium were indeed people in costume, and three Bay Area friends participated together after answering a vague casting call.

Humberto Martinez, who has experience working as a dancer, couldn’t resist the opportunity even though the casting call specified it was not a dancing role.

“I applied right away and I sent it to (my friend),” Martinez told CBS News Bay Area. “I sent it to the group chat. I sent it to hella people and said, ‘You need to do this.'”

This time, the plans left the group chat. Martinez, and his friends Ivan Pineda and Tara Lily, were cast into the roles. Strangely, however, landing the job itself did not turn out to be the biggest surprise.

The friends said they participated in multiple rehearsals before they were approached by members of the team and shown the costumes they would be wearing. They said the staff was recording them to capture their reactions, and when they emerged with a full-body bush costume, the friends said the staff was met with stunned silence.

“We were told that this would be talked about forever. And I was like, ‘Oh my God this is so exciting!’ We’re gonna be (dressed as) something that like that is so really crazy, like a movement. But it wasn’t,” Pineda said, laughing.

The bush, like much else in the performance, seemed to be a symbolic nod to sugarcane on the island of Puerto Rico where Bad Bunny grew up.

It turned out wearing the costume itself wasn’t easy. The friends estimate the item weighed between 45 and 50 pounds and said that many people were struggling to keep it on for hours at a time during dress rehearsals.

Still, they say the hardest part by far was keeping the performance and their role in it a secret from their other friends and family members until after the show was over. They even had to hand over their cell phones to keep the details of the show from getting out.

By the time the halftime performance was upon them, the friends said that the nerves were tempered by the fact that they had seen and practiced the show some 20 times.

Their focus was oftentimes on the crowd and watching their reaction as guests Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga emerged on stage.

Once the performance was over, viewers started posting about the halftime bushes, which suddenly seemed to sprout legs and shuffle off the field. Once the friends were able to share publicly, their social media posts documenting the experience instantly went viral.

They were stopped on the streets of San Francisco’s Castro several times Monday by viewers who recognized their grass-adorned arm pieces.

“They weren’t lying about us being talked about, but I didn’t expect to be like grass you know, but I would do it again,” Martinez said. “Put me back in.”

The bush performers said they were paid just under $19 an hour for their work, but said that the opportunity to participate meant more than money.