The real-life chief of the Space Force has one piece of advice for his fictional counterpart: Get a haircut.
Gen. John Raymond, the first ever chief of space operations, was reacting Wednesday to a trailer released a day before for the Netflix comedy “Space Force,” in which Steve Carell stars as the head of the new military branch.
“The one piece of advice I’d give to Steve Carell is to get a haircut. You’re looking a little too shaggy if you want to play the Space Force chief,” Raymond, who is bald, said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Space Foundation.
While Raymond said he was hoping the Space Force chief would be played by fellow bald man Bruce Willis, he added he thinks Carell is a “great actor, and I love his shows. So we’re looking forward” to watching.
The real-life Space Force was created as the sixth branch of the military in December when President Trump signed the annual defense policy bill.
The new service is aimed at protecting U.S. assets in space, such as satellites, from earthly threats, including U.S. adversaries Russia and China.
Trump coined the name Space Force in 2018, but the idea for a separate branch of the military for space originated as a bipartisan House idea in 2017.
When Trump began talking about Space Force, jokes abounded online and on late-night shows. In January 2019, Netflix announced Carell would team up with his former producer on “The Office,” Greg Daniels, to create the “Space Force” comedy.
The first trailer for the show, which debuts on Netflix on May 29, was released Tuesday.
In one scene, a stressed Carell, who plays fictional Space Force head Gen. Mark Naird, begins singing “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys when he is alone in his office.
Asked during Wednesday’s webinar if the real Space Force would adopt the show’s theme song as its own, Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett joked that “we’re all into ‘Kokomo.’”
Barrett is the civilian head of the Space Force since the branch falls under the Department of the Air Force, in a structure similar to the Marine Corps’s relationship with the Navy. She added that the show “is just further evidence that space is where things are happening … whether it’s Netflix or the United States Pentagon.”
The real Space Force released its own video Wednesday: its first recruitment video. The video debuted during the webinar and was posted online shortly after. Barrett said the ad, which posits that “maybe your purpose on this planet isn’t on this planet,” will also air on television beginning Wednesday.