Powered by Plants: Preacher Lawson Pumps Up Memphis Gym-Goers with Vegan Message
For Immediate Release:
March 14, 2025
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
Vegan as bleep! To mark the start of his “Funny as Bleep” tour, comedian, athlete, and longtime vegan Preacher Lawson—who spent most of his youth in Memphis—has a message for fitness buffs gearing up for summer at local gyms. An explosive new ad for PETA reveals his rock-hard physique—and his rock-hard commitment to plant-powered fuel.
In addition to the new PETA ad showing Lawson proudly crediting vegan eating for his health and strength, the funnyman also appears in two behind-the-scenes videos, one in which he reads mean tweets and debunks vegan myths—“Do I look weak to you?,” he yells, while humorously ripping off his shirt—and the other in which he shares why he went vegan after watching the documentary Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. “I do think a lot of people don’t know what happens to animals,” says Lawson. “If you’re against murder, you’re against murder… That’s the main reason people become vegan is they don’t want to hurt anybody. We’re all people, we’re all equal, we all breathe, we all bleed, we all get happy and sad. All of us.”
Cows develop friendships over time, turkeys are devoted parents who purr to their chicks, chickens form complex social structures, and pigs recognize their own names—but in today’s meat, egg, and dairy industries, the animals are trucked to slaughterhouses in all weather extremes and violently killed.
The spot will run on digital gym screens throughout Memphis, as well as in Orlando, Florida, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. A full list of locations is available here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help everyone follow his lead, show animals some compassion, and get ripped and fit on vegan nutrition. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
