Q&A: Brian Huskey on his white-suburban-dad minivan swagger

On his Twitter page, Brian Huskey presents himself as "comedian and friend to the common man, but not to the little guy. Screw that guy!" Thanks to the success of Toyota's "Swagger Wagon" video from Saatchi & Saatchi, Huskey has shored up his common-man cred and can afford to alienate a potential audience of little guys. The comedian/actor, known for his work with the Upright Citizens Brigade, says ever since "Swagger Wagon" appeared, promoting the Sienna SE minivan, he's had the social-media equivalent of people stopping him on the street—i.e., sending messages to him via Facebook. Huskey, who is also known for starring in ads for Sonic Drive-in, recently spoke to BrandFreak about his newfound celebrity. Check out some excerpts after the jump.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

  BrandFreak: Was a lot of the Swagger Wagon ad improvised?
  Brian Huskey: Some. The script was great, but they said you can change the final version if you want.
  BF: Was there a line that you remember coming up with?
  BH: There was one good line that ended up in another commercial about a fight my father and I had and how we hadn't spoken for years. It was kind of a funny line for a commercial. You sell a lot of products with family strife. To be honest, I've been credited with the "swagger wagon" thing, but I do believe that that was a line [in the script]. I don't want to take credit for that.
  BF: Will there be a sequel to the video?
  BH: I don't know. I've learned in the past not to ask what's coming up because it tends to build up expectations, and I'd much rather be surprised, and I can schedule my finances a little better that way.
  BF: Speaking of which, how do you get paid for this? Do you get paid every time someone sees it on YouTube?
  BH: No, for the Internet they do a buyout, and after a year you get another holding fee.
  BF: I've seen you in the Sonic ads. Are you in any others?
  BH: I did one for Charter Communications with a tiger—a very old, not threatening looking tiger. I'm not doing anything with Sonic anymore. 
  BF: In the Toyota ad, the tone you take is a little harder than you might expect, and that seems to work. Did you experiment with different approaches?
  BH: When they did the audition they said, "These people think they're likable, but they're not likable." The attitude is people who are clinging to the personal image they had of themselves in college a little too tightly. When we shot it, we had a range of "Do it a little less snarky" or "Do it a full-on mean."
  BF: What are you working on now?
  BH: I just did a pilot for FX that did not get picked up, so we're shopping it around. I'm just auditioning, and I'm doing a few writing projects.
  BF: Any commercials?
  BH: I did a thing for Disney XD, it's like a Disney channel, just a promo. I played the voice of an anatomy mannequin.