My cousin and I have a bet. I say that Yvette Nicole Brown from “Community” did a Dairy Queen commercial. She says she did a pizza commercial. Who is right?
—Rachelle King, Tupelo, Miss.
You are both right. Brown, 41, has a really long list of commercials on her resumé, and Dairy Queen and DiGiorno Pizza are just two. Some of her others are Shout, Home Depot, Pine-Sol and Lexus.
But the East Cleveland, Ohio-born actress actually began her entertainment career as a recording artist on the Motown Records label. As a teen, she was featured on “The East Coast Family Vol. 1” album, which included the Top-20 single “1-4-All-4-1.”
While her commercial work helped support her as she built her acting career, the graduate of the University of Akron has a lot of TV credits, including recurring roles on “Boston Legal,” “Girlfriends,” “Sleeper Cell,” “Half & Half” and “Drake & Josh.”
She was also a series regular on “The Big House.”
Her film credits include “Little Black Book,” “The Island,” “Dreamgirls,” “The Kid & I,” “Meet Dave,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Hotel for Dogs,” “The Ugly Truth,” “Repo Men,” “500 Days of Summer” and the upcoming “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: Sea of Monsters.”
Even with so many TV shows and films from which to choose, Brown says that “Community,” on which she plays divorced mom Shirley Bennett, is probably the rowdiest one on which she’s ever worked.
“It’s also the most fun, because everyone is free to just be as freaky as they are individually,” she says. “Whatever you find funny, whatever makes you laugh and whatever you think will make someone else laugh, we’re empowered to just be ourselves. I think a lot of that playfulness is what makes it into the show. There are times where we’re giggling or there’s a bubbly energy because five minutes before somebody did something ridiculous, and it carries into the fun of the scene.”
