He still gets recognized from his Super Bowl ad 26 years later. We asked him ‘Whassup.’

He still gets recognized from his Super Bowl ad 26 years later. We asked him ‘Whassup.’

With a single phrase — “Whassup?” — a bunch of associates modified the means Americans greeted each other.

The exaggerated call-and-response originated in a December 1999 Budweiser industrial and have become a phenomenon before social media reshaped how catchphrases unfold. More than 25 years later, the greeting still echoes by means of motion pictures, memes and on a regular basis conversations.

“I had no idea it would become part of the cultural lexicon,” Scott Martin Brooks tells Yahoo.

Brooks performed Dookie in the ad, which adopted a bunch of fellows on the cellphone while watching soccer and “having a Bud.” They stretched out the one-word greeting like putty, their tongues dangling. They said little else, however the affection between the associates was unmistakable.

“It encapsulates friendship — and how friends can say very little, but mean so much,” says Brooks. “People saw themselves in us.”

That chemistry wasn’t faux. The group — including Charles Stone III, Fred Thomas and Paul Williams — had been childhood friends from Philadelphia. What started as a single industrial grew right into a full campaign — Super Bowl slots included — and a whirlwind of fame they might not have predicted. Least of all Brooks, a West Philly-bred nightclub bouncer who had never acted professionally and went on to seem in 12 commercials.

“Whassup?” was Stone’s brainchild. Then a rising music video director, he made a brief movie, True, impressed by the greeting their buddy group used as teenagers. The brief caught the consideration of the Budweiser inventive team.

Brooks wasn’t in the brief movie. But when it got here time to solid the ad, Stone, who directed, urged him to audition after the authentic Dookie declined. Brooks went up against 249 other actors over a three-day casting course of.

“I was the only one who had never auditioned for anything before,” Brooks says. “I had no real aspirations of being an actor. I didn’t have an agent. I had no idea what I was doing.”

Fortunately, Brooks discovered himself among “a bunch of guys who are doing ‘Whassup’ very badly,” he remembers. Vinny Warren, lead creator for the ad company, later told him it was “astounding how many people couldn’t get that simple word correct.”

Budweiser initially envisioned one thing different — skilled actors and a multicultural solid. But as auditions went on, the team pivoted, recognizing they couldn’t manufacture the chemistry the associates introduced naturally.

They made the proper name. The first ad rolled out in December 1999. At Super Bowl XXXIV the following month, Budweiser ran a follow-up, “Whassup Girlfriend,” centered on Dookie watching determine skating with his girlfriend while his associates called from a bar. That storyline continued in later spots, including “Whassup Wasabi.”

“Paul always said it was because I had the biggest, brightest head, so I stood out like a light bulb,” Brooks says of changing into one thing of a breakout star. “I think it boils down to the chemistry between Dameka, who played my girlfriend, and me.”

Despite the campaign’s success, Brooks initially went proper again to work as a bouncer.

“I’m from the streets, and I’m like, This could end at any moment. I need to keep my job,” he says. For about three months, he tried to steadiness each — until the consideration grew to become overwhelming. “People were coming into the club like, ‘You’re the Whassup guy!’ ‘I got thrown out of the club by the Whassup guy!’ It just got to be too much.”

Brooks didn’t want that gig anyway. As the nation’s favourite new catchphrase started to take off, the associates had been tapped as Budweiser model ambassadors, touring the nation for appearances and TV spots over the next two years.

The “Whassup?” guys — Paul Williams and Fred Thomas (rear), Charles Stone III and Brooks — with actress Jennifer Love Hewitt on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno in March 2000. (Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal through Getty Images through Getty Images)

(NBC through Getty Images)

“We were on the road four days out of the week every month,” he says. “Morning shows, evening shows, mall openings. It was like getting paid to hang out with your friends on an all-expenses-paid trip around the country.”

They even attended the Super Bowl each 12 months — despite Brooks’s lack of curiosity in sports activities.

“The funny thing [is] I was never a big sports fan,” Brooks laughs. “They would put us in the Budweiser suite, and I was more interested in the food and watching TV. I didn’t drink [either].”

The full weight of their fame hit at the 2000 Grammy Awards. Early on the pink carpet, reporters didn’t need to discuss to them. As they headed inside, they walked past the bleachers full of followers.

Williams, Thomas and Brooks at the 2000 Grammys. (SGranitz/WireImage)

(Steve Granitz through Getty Images)

“I hear faintly, ‘Yo, Dookie!’” Brooks remembers. “Then the bleachers just erupt. At that point, all of the media outlets were like, ‘Get them back here!’”

The campaign’s cultural footprint only grew. Scary Movie parodied it in July 2000. James Earl Jones delivered the line — tongue included — on The Late Show with David Letterman. The Simpsons did its personal take.

Years later, it popped up in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Budweiser did a reboot during the pandemic. In 2006, “Whassup” was inducted into the CLIO Awards Hall of Fame.

The publicity led to internet hosting gigs and appearing alternatives for Brooks, including a job in Mr. 3000, one in all a number of big-budget movies Stone went on to direct.

Brooks with Bernie Mac in Mr. 3000. (Touchstone/Courtesy of Everett Collection)

(©Touchstone Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Yet Brooks never imagined the campaign would outlive its period. Decades later, it continues to be rediscovered — sometimes mistaken for a parody slightly than the authentic.

“It’s humbling to know that something you did has lasted this long,” he says. “And people still like it.”

That said, he provides with fun, “So many kids think that it came from Scary Movie.”

In latest years, Brooks has confronted critical health challenges. Diagnosed with kidney disease in 2016, he later went on dialysis. In 2024, he obtained a kidney transplant.

“That curtailed a lot of my activities,” says Brooks, who needed to flip down a job in one in all Stone’s latest movies. “But now I’m back to auditioning. I’ve got two agents, and we’re back on the grind.”

Perhaps the most enduring a part of the story is that the friendships stay intact. Brooks incessantly talks to Williams and is engaged on a writing project with Thomas, who has since appeared in sequence including Kold x Windy. Stone — whose directing résumé continues to develop — was not too long ago at Brooks’s home just after the new 12 months.

“We root for each other’s success,” he says. “We’ve been friends too long to let any kind of petty jealousy get in the way.”

Brooks as soon as hoped the commercials is perhaps remembered fondly for a few years.

“I had no idea that 25 years later it would still be relevant,” he says.

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