Almost undoubtedly money; T-Mobile and/or their ad agency probably made him an offer that he thought, “I’d be an idiot to turn this down.”
Larry David took a lot of flak for appearing in a 2022 FTX cryptocurrency ad as a crypto skeptic who insists he’s “never wrong.” (As irony would have it, he was paid in crypto for the ad and lost a huge amount when his investment crashed.)
The first commercial in this series I saw was a strange threesome with Jeff Bridges in his Lebowski persona, Zoe Saldana, and this slacker-looking dude who I thought was supposed to be this Lebowski Jr. type, as if the big Lebowski had a son, or took on an apprentice or something. But my wife later told me it was Zoe Saldana’s real-life husband, and that’s just how he looks IRL.
I saw SnoopLoops cereal in the store.
I dunno…did anyone really think “I can’t believe Mr. T is degrading his reputation as a thespian by engaging in this crass commercialism?”
I think Mr. T has a similar challenge to Snoop Dogg. It’s not so much a question of professional respect as a thespian, as it is maintaining ‘street cred’.
He’s had some pretty serious health issues. He may want be ensuring there’s still money left after he’s gone.
Mr. T starred in a family friendly prime time television series, had his own cartoon, and released a rap about respecting your mother right.
I’m going to nominate MC Hammer. He tried changing his name to Hammer in an effort to tap into the gangsta rap market, but this is a guy who sang for the Addams Family movie and had a Saturday morning cartoon. Trying to go all hard just made him a laughing stock.
He also wrote a book. I read a few pages of it one day while idling in the PX. He actually wrote his autobiography….by himself! No ghost writer. No help. He plainly did so because I remember it having a style something like this:
I wrote this book. I wrote it myself. I could have had some professional writer write it but then it wouldn’t be my book. So I wrote it. These are my words. So if you don’t like it you can blame me.
Hammer’s got nothin’ on Pat Boone.
Ya gotta admit Boone had to have serious guts to dress like that on national TV in that era while appearing as himself, not portraying some artificial character.
Either that or a total lack of sense.
This one, too:
Yeah, I can’t stand Pat Boone but I give him credit for having a sense of humor on that one.
Now David Lee Roth doing bluegrass? That’s embarrassing.
Pat Boone may be a square in most people’s books, but he was good friends with Ozzy when they were neighbors.
When he and Sharon and the kids lived next-door to me for a couple of years…we were just friends and neighbors getting along just fine. I was amazed when Sharon picked my version of Ozzy‘s “Crazy Train” as the opening theme of their hugely successful reality TV show. Others may celebrate his incredible rocking style and hard rock music – but I’ll always remember his warm friendliness as my next-door neighbor.
He also had a fan in Ritchie Blackmore:
…I’ve always looked up to Pat Boone; I listened to him in the ’50s, when I was going to school, and when I was asked to play on one of his modern recordings, I considered it an honor. It’s great to be able to play on an album by someone who inspired you when you were growing up.
The whole thing was tongue-in-cheek. Boone released an album covering a bunch of heavy metal songs and this was just his way to promote it. Apparently he took some flak from fans who thought metal covers were tasteless, but overall I’m not sure Boone’s reputation jumped the shark here.
Not to be confused with “Mr. T And Tina” which, believe it or not, didn’t feature him at all.
I must have missed that one. 
It was a “blink and you miss it” thing: a very short-lived spin-off from Welcome Back, Kotter in 1976 (several years before the other Mr. T became well-known), which starred Pat Morita as a Japanese inventor named Taro Takahashi, a.k.a. “Mr. T.” Only five episodes ever aired, and it was apparently pretty awful.