He’s gained fame as Bud Light’s ‘Dilly Dilly’ King. But would you recognize him on the street?
To get an idea of exactly how famous John Hoogenakker has become for his role as the supercilious, easily irritable king in Bud Light’s medieval-themed ads, consider this:
A few months ago, the 41-year-old actor — who grew up in Charlotte and graduated from South Meck High — says he was walking down State Street in his adopted hometown of Chicago when he noticed a man coming towards him, wearing a T-shirt with the ad campaign’s iconic catchphrase, “Dilly Dilly.”
“I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna make this guy’s day.’ I never do this. I never ever do this,” Hoogenakker says. “So I lean over as he’s walking past me, and I go, ‘Hey man, really like that shirt!’ You know, making sure he can see my face and everything. And he just looks back at me. He’s like, ‘Thanks, dude!’ Keeps walking.”
Maybe — just maybe — it’ll click for that random stranger if he sees Hoogenakker’s face in yet another Bud Light commercial this Sunday night during CBS’s telecast of Super Bowl LIII. That’s when Anheuser-Busch Inbev is expected to air at least one brand-new ad featuring the king ... although we honestly have no idea what to expect, since Hoogenakker is sworn to secrecy regarding anything related to Bud Light’s Super Bowl plans.
(There’s so much hype around these commercials, in fact, that bookmakers in Vegas are taking prop bets on whether the phrase “dilly dilly” will be uttered during one of them on Sunday night.)
Still, Hoogenakker — who’s also won a regular role in the forthcoming second season of Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” spy series — gave us a peek behind the scenes of past Bud Light ads, including that time his horse tried to throw his highness in New Zealand. And he answered our burning question: Does he enjoy drinking Bud Light as much as the king does?
If you can’t quite place the king’s accent, that’s because ... “We had to dial it in a good amount at the beginning. We had to ‘find’ it. He (director Jim Jenkins) didn’t want anything overtly British. He wanted something just vaguely royal, and vaguely pompous. And he wanted the king to be the smartest and the dumbest guy in the room.”
We don’t know how much Hoogenakker gets paid for his work, but Anheuser-Busch Inbev definitely has deep pockets for these ads: “The ones that are airing now with the snobby, really wealthy couple, those we shot in Prague in the Czech Republic, in honest-to-goodness castles, which was really, really cool. Earlier in the year, we shot in Spain. Flew into Valencia and then drove down to this coastal town called Peñíscola. ... It just blows your mind that location scouts have all these crazy far-flung locations in their brains. Like, the ones in New Zealand (where last year’s Super Bowl ads — “Ye Olde Pep Talk” and “The Bud Knight” — were filmed) were on a guy’s several-thousand-acre sheep farm, and they had to cut a road to get all the equipment back to where we needed to shoot. It looked like Hobbiton. I mean, it was amazing.”
He actually had kind of a close call in New Zealand: “They always put me on a white horse. And I don’t know what it is, but these horses are so skittish. They always say that horses are thinking three things: Something just happened, something’s happening, or something’s about to happen. On the first take, I was giving a battle speech to the townsfolk, and we were gonna go to battle against this really well-armed army that had all this Bud Light that we were gonna try and get from them. I was delivering this battle speech with kind of a crescendo to it, and I get to the end and I shout, “So, Dilly Dilly!” All of these townspeople start shaking brooms and pitchforks and all this nonsense, and they shook it like right in the horse’s face, and the horse reared back on its hind legs and tried to throw me. That sort of established the mood for the day. The horse like memorized the speech in that one take. So every time we did it, it started to freak out as we got to the end.”
So, does he enjoy drinking Bud Light as much as the king does? “I have enjoyed Bud Light for years. I enjoy a straightforward American pilsner. I love pilsners, and pilsner is the style of lager that Bud Light is. In general, that would definitely be my go-to beer style. But I enjoy all different kinds of beer. I actually was a brewer for awhile — a home brewer — and did all sorts of other styles of beer. And lagers are tougher to brew. It’s a bottom-fermenting yeast. The ales, the yeast ferments on the top. Without going too deep into what may not be very interesting to you.” (He laughs.)
“(But I stopped because) I’ve got two kids and it feels a little indulgent to be spending time bottling. I really enjoyed it, but honestly, I was into it more for the science of it than I was for the beer. ... I’m also into like bees. I’ve continued to threaten my wife with, ‘I’m gonna keep bees this year. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.’ But I haven’t been able to have the time. And that’s all my wife needs, is to be left with two kids and a bunch of bees while I’m off shooting something.”
By the way, it’s pronounced “Hoe-gan-acker”: “It’s a long O, and a short A. It’s Dutch. Oddly enough, some people hear Dutch and they think you’re from Denmark. The Dutch are actually from the Netherlands. Just a point of clarification. (Laughing.) ... I’ve heard it pronounced so many different ways. And oftentimes, when people will ask how it’s pronounced, you’ll say it and then they’ll say it back to you some other way. I’ll say ‘Hoe-gan-acker,’ they’ll say, ‘Oh, got it. Hoo-ga-nay-ker.’ But it doesn’t bother me at all. Whereas my (10-year-old) son is like really militant about it. He says it really slow and stares at the people that he’s talking to. I’m like, ‘Buddy, you gotta let that go, man.’ ”
Last year’s ads weren’t his first jobs working in Super Bowl commercials. “A few years ago, I did an Avocados From Mexico spot that ran during the Super Bowl. And just this morning, my wife made a reference to the spot — we eat a lot of avocados in our household — and then our (6-year-old) daughter was like, ‘Wait, I don’t remember that.’ So we pulled it up and showed it to her. I was a tour guide in outer space, leading different aliens through an exhibit about earth, and talking about all these random little things. At one point, we walked by Scott Baio, who was in a glass case. ...
“I do a lot of voice-over work, too, and another year — it was just a few days before the Super Bowl — I got a call to put in a read for basically reading the lines of on-camera talent for a Super Bowl spot that had already been filmed. I ended up getting the job, and I went in and did ADR and overdubbed my voice over the onscreen talent. That was actually a Budweiser spot. It was two cowboys sitting on a fence looking at the Clydesdales. It was crazy. So two different actors got paid for saying the same thing.”
Though he doesn’t get recognized in street clothes — ever, he claims — he has been known to cause a stir when he puts on the king’s costume in public: “(The Bud Light team sent us) to a Loyola Ramblers event last year, when they made it to the Sweet 16, at a bar here in Chicago on the north side. And I’ve never experienced anything like that, the way people responded to that role. We came in with trumpeters and rose-petal people — it was utterly absurd. Just the silliest thing in the world. I think that’s part of why people have responded to it favorably is because in a time when everything is so serious, to have something that’s just silly for silly’s sake I think is, maybe, refreshing. I’m really grateful to be a part of it.”
Théoden Janes: 704-358-5897, @theodenjanes
Hoogenakker highlights
▪ As a member of South Mecklenburg High School’s debate team, he was a two-time state and district champion in Humorous Interpretation.
▪ His first gig after graduating from DePaul University’s theater program was as a cast member in “Antony and Cleopatra,” which christened the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s then-brand-new space on Navy Pier in 1999.
▪ He’s worked with Robert DeNiro (in a commercial for a movie marathon featuring the Academy Award-winning actor, sponsored by Santander Bank), with Clint Eastwood (in “Flags of Our Fathers”), and with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale (in “Public Enemies”).
This story was originally published February 1, 2019 at 4:30 PM with the headline "He’s gained fame as Bud Light’s ‘Dilly Dilly’ King. But would you recognize him on the street?."
