With a single word — “Whassup?” — a group of friends changed the way Americans greeted each other.
The exaggerated call-and-response originated in a December 1999 Budweiser commercial and became a phenomenon before social media reshaped how catchphrases spread. More than 25 years later, the greeting still echoes through movies, memes and everyday conversations.
“I had no idea it would become part of the cultural lexicon,” Scott Martin Brooks tells Yahoo.
Brooks played Dookie in the ad, which followed a group of guys on the phone while watching football and “having a Bud.” They stretched out the one-word greeting like putty, their tongues dangling. They said little else, but the affection between the friends 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 pretend. The group — including Charles Stone III, Fred Thomas and Paul Williams — were childhood pals from Philadelphia. What began as a single commercial grew into a full campaign — Super Bowl slots included — and a whirlwind of fame they could not have predicted. Least of all Brooks, a West Philly-bred nightclub bouncer who had never acted professionally and went on to appear in 12 commercials.
“Whassup?” was Stone’s brainchild. Then a rising music video director, he made a short film, True, inspired by the greeting their friend group used as teens. The short caught the attention of the Budweiser creative team.
Brooks wasn’t in the short film. But when it came time to cast the ad, Stone, who directed, urged him to audition after the original Dookie declined. Brooks went up against 249 other actors over a three-day casting process.
“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 found himself among “a bunch of guys who are doing ‘Whassup’ very badly,” he recalls. Vinny Warren, lead creator for the ad agency, later told him it was “astounding how many people couldn’t get that simple word correct.”
Budweiser initially envisioned something different — professional actors and a multicultural cast. But as auditions went on, the team pivoted, recognizing they couldn’t manufacture the chemistry the friends brought naturally.
They made the right call. 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 figure skating with his girlfriend while his friends 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 becoming something 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 right back 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 balance both — until the attention became 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 need that gig anyway. As the nation’s favorite new catchphrase began to take off, the friends were tapped as Budweiser brand ambassadors, traveling the country 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 via Getty Images via Getty Images)
(NBC via 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 year — despite Brooks’s lack of interest in sports.
“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 red carpet, reporters didn’t want to talk to them. As they headed inside, they walked past the bleachers filled with fans.
Williams, Thomas and Brooks at the 2000 Grammys. (SGranitz/WireImage)
(Steve Granitz via Getty Images)
“I hear faintly, ‘Yo, Dookie!’” Brooks recalls. “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 own 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 exposure led to hosting gigs and acting opportunities for Brooks, including a role in Mr. 3000, one of several big-budget films 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 era. Decades later, it continues to be rediscovered — sometimes mistaken for a parody rather than the original.
“It’s humbling to know that something you did has lasted this long,” he says. “And people still like it.”
That said, he adds with a laugh, “So many kids think that it came from Scary Movie.”
In recent years, Brooks has faced serious health challenges. Diagnosed with kidney disease in 2016, he later went on dialysis. In 2024, he received a kidney transplant.
“That curtailed a lot of my activities,” says Brooks, who had to turn down a role in one of Stone’s recent films. “But now I’m back to auditioning. I’ve got two agents, and we’re back on the grind.”
Perhaps the most enduring part of the story is that the friendships remain intact. Brooks frequently talks to Williams and is working on a writing project with Thomas, who has since appeared in series including Kold x Windy. Stone — whose directing résumé continues to grow — was recently at Brooks’s house just after the new year.
“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 once hoped the commercials might be remembered fondly for a few years.
“I had no idea that 25 years later it would still be relevant,” he says.
