Throwback Thursday: Superstar Kym Whitley Got Her Start In TV Commercials

One Rooftop Jingle Still Follows Her Three Decades Later

This Throwback Thursday is extra spicy and hilarious, starring master comedian Kym Whitley, who got some of her earliest screen time the good ol’ fashioned way: television commercials.

Dig out Kym’s 1994 Pringles Double Stacks spot, followed by her Healthy Choice cereal campaign. The commercials are already a blast on their own, but Whitley later revealed that the Pringles shoot was far more exhausting—and emotionally lasting—than its breezy final cut suggests.

During an appearance on We Sound Crazy, Whitley watched the Pringles ad again and immediately remembered it as her first commercial. She was not actually singing the jingle, despite some committed lip-syncing that had people wondering for years whose voice they were hearing.

The production took over a rooftop in Santa Monica for what she remembered as two or three long days. Different angles, technical setups and repeated takes stretched the seemingly simple performance into a full physical workout.

By the time filming wrapped, Whitley said she was so sore that she had to soak in the bathtub. Even then, the jingle would not leave her alone. After singing and lip-syncing it over and over for days, she could still hear the melody cycling through her head—and proved it by remembering the tune more than 30 years later.

At least there was one very important fringe benefit: free potato chips. Not forever, as she quickly clarified, but long enough to make the assignment feel like a legitimate Hollywood arrival.

Her memory of the commercial became more than a funny behind-the-scenes story. Looking at her younger self, Whitley remembered how thrilled she once was to receive any opportunity at all—the version of herself who would gladly take one line in a movie as long as somebody put her on the screen.

She keeps a reminder on her door that reads, “You just begun. You’re only 17.” It is her way of protecting the eagerness that can fade after years of rejection, industry games and disappointment. The young woman bouncing through a potato-chip commercial may have been exhausted, but she had not yet learned to be jaded.

Whitley said holding onto that spirit requires prayer, refusing to move through life in fear and remembering that entertainment is a job—not the entirety of who she is. Her larger lesson was to build a full life outside the business, so a rejection or missed role cannot take everything down with it.

It was the same wide-ranging podcast appearance in which Whitley opened up about the much harder experience behind playing a hurt and visibly abused woman in Next Friday. One conversation moved from old commercials and free chips to the emotional cost of performing pain—showing just how much history lives behind even the funniest Kym Whitley clip.

The two advertisements now play like miniature time capsules: bright styling, giant product enthusiasm and a future comedy star already finding the camera. Kym may have been selling stacked chips and breakfast cereal, but the personality was never hiding inside the package.

Watch Kym Whitley’s 1994 Pringles Double Stacks Commercial

The rooftop spot features Whitley lip-syncing, dancing and selling the Pringles jingle with enough commitment to keep it lodged in her memory for decades.

Then Catch Kym Whitley In Her Healthy Choice Cereal Era

The second throwback clip continues Whitley’s early commercial run with a very 1990s Healthy Choice cereal campaign.

Source: We Sound Crazy; archived commercial footage.