Anyone who has access to the internet has seen comedian DJ Pryor and his perfect bb Kingston blow up over the past few weeks. First, they surpassed 60 million Facebook views on a completely candid video. Then, they landed a Denny's commercial.
Now, millions more have seen them (Denny's Chief Branding Officer John Dillon confirmed to Delish the commercial has 11+ million more views which has "admittedly well surpassed even our optimistic expectations"). Finally, DJ—but not so much Kingston just yet—spoke to Delish about fatherhood, his all-time Denny's fav, and what's coming next for him and his boy(s).
Did you have any inkling the video was going to explode the way it did?
I had no clue. [My wife Shanieke and I] record stuff for our own little home movies, so I thought that’s what it was going to be for. And then she uploaded it, and I didn’t even know. People were texting me “Congratulations!” and I was like "...What are you talking about?” I go on Facebook, and I saw [the video] was at 500,000 views.
And then 60 million views later…
Crazy, right? In 24 hours, it did 25 million.
You have similar conversations with Kingston pretty frequently, I presume?
Yes. All the time.
What do you most often talk about?
Anything! I try to translate what I think he’s talking about. And he’s good at communicating with his hands, as you can see. He’ll point at something so you know this is at least the topic we're on, that we’re somewhere around there [laughs].
Has he said his first actual word yet?
Yeah! He has his times where he says “Daddy, up!” or “Daddy, go!” But right now he’s in that impersonation phase—he’s a copycat, a parrot. Whatever you say, he says.
You know if his first word is “Denny’s,” we’ll have to do a follow-up interview, right?
[Laughs] Oh, I love him. He’ll call for his mommy sometimes, but he’s always calling out my name: "Daddy, Daddy! Dada, Dada!
How did the collaboration with Denny’s unfold?
Denny’s reached out the day after [the original video hit Facebook] They hit me up through Instagram, and I was like "This ain’t no damn Denny’s! This is a lie!" But I saw a little blue check and gave them my agent’s number. Maybe 10 minutes later, my agent texted me like “Hey, Denny’s just hit us up.” I was like “What!? OK, OK.”
They expressed what they wanted to do for Father’s Day and how they thought me and Kingston would be a great fit, but that we were running out of time! They flew me and my oldest in, because my wife was already in Florida, put us up in a hotel, and then flew us back to Tennessee the next day.
Wild question: If you had to pick one item to eat off the Denny’s menu forever, what would it be?
Oh, man. It’s so weird, because me and my family, we actually go there. I actually went that day before we shot, and I had grits. Their grits are amazing. It’s weird, I know, but I get grits when I go to Denny's. Look, all the people who hear this are gonna judge me, but whatever! Their grits are so good!
How about Kingston? Does he have a preferred Denny’s meal?
He loves pancakes. And his newfound love is bacon. [While we were on set] I was like “I didn’t know you felt this way about bacon,” and he looks at me like “I didn’t know I felt this way about bacon.” It was amazing.
How would you say you’re handling all of this? There must be a huge influx of attention from the commercial alone.
You know, one step at a time! I’m having fun, riding the wave. I am a stand-up comedian and an actor, and it gave me a platform. so I was already working on some projects before this.
As far as Kingston, I’m very protective of my kids. He’s my second, my oldest son Jabari is eight, and he’s an actor! He’s working on a little project right now, but again, I’m very protective of my family, so I don’t know how much more I’m going to be putting Kingston out there like that. I love that the world loves him, but he’s still my son. When he’s older, if he decides he wants to do all of this type of stuff, I’ll put him out there.
So what's next?
I’ll put it like this—I’m in LA right now, I have a lot of meetings. Lots of things in development—TV, film, and I’m currently prepping for tour right now. So we are working! But we’re still gonna be us. We’re just regular people who love each other very much and happened to capture it on tape and it resonated with the world.
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