Video: Stranger Things Star Brett Gelman Takes on SeaWorld’s Real-Life Horror in New PETA Campaign
For Immediate Release:
October 22, 2026
Contact:
Hannah Nelson 202-483-7382
“The most important rule at SeaWorld? Never tell anyone what we actually do.” In a new video for PETA, Stranger Things star Brett Gelman brings his signature dark humoras a “SeaWorld Trainer,” schooling new hires on what happens behind the scenes—and how to spin it for the public. Gelman’s campaign also includes giant mobile messages that will circle the abusement park’s San Diego and Orlando locations ahead of their “Howl-O-Scream” events today and tomorrow, reminding would-be visitors that the real scares are reserved for the animals trapped there.
“Welcome to SeaWorld, the place where we jerk off dolphins and call it conservation.” That’s how Gelman kicks off his “training video” before he dives into other cunning deceptions, including “The orcas don’t float motionless in their tanks because they’ve lost their will to live. They’re practicing ‘aquatic meditation.’” And, “We’re not responsible for dolphin fights in overcrowded tanks—we cultivate ‘unlikely friendships.’” The video devolves as Gelman eventually loses his will to lie and desperately whimpers, “I love my job, I love my job.”
In nature, orcas can swim up to 150 miles a day and dive deep beneath the ocean’s surface, but at SeaWorld, they’re confined to cramped concrete tanks and often housed with incompatible tankmates, leading to attacks and injuries.
In SeaWorld’s dolphin breeding program, male bottlenose dolphins are masturbated, and females are taken from the water and sometimes drugged so they can’t fight back while staff shove tubes filled with semen into their uteruses.
More than 40 orcas and 500 other dolphins and whales have died in SeaWorld’s tanks. Sixteen orcas and 130 dolphins are still imprisoned across its San Diego, Orlando, and San Antonio parks, and PETA encourages everyone to call on SeaWorld to relocate them to seaside sanctuaries and end its cruel breeding program.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
