Kym Whitley
Kym Whitley is an actor, born 1961.
Fifty-five credits and almost no leads. That is the shape of Kym Whitley's career, and it is not a complaint: she is a comedian first, out of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and the job she has done for thirty years is to walk into a scene, take it, and leave before anyone can adjust.
The sitcom list is enormous. My Brother and Me, Sparks, The Parkers, Animal Practice, Young & Hungry, plus Wanda on My Wife and Kids, Vicky Baxter on That's So Raven, and later runs on The Neighborhood, The Upshaws and Loot. Animation suits her even better, because a voice that big does not need a camera pointed at it: The Boondocks, The Cleveland Show, Melonee in Rango, and Honey Bee in Black Dynamite, which she then played again in the animated series.
Honey Bee is the fullest thing on the list. Black Dynamite is a blaxploitation pastiche that only works if the performances are committed rather than winking, and Whitley plays it completely straight, which is much harder than mugging. The one piece of formal recognition on her record is for exactly the sort of work she does: a 2004 BET Comedy Award nomination for supporting actress, for Ormandy in Deliver Us From Eva. The film credits keep arriving, from Next Friday and Along Came Polly to Hubie Halloween and Happy Gilmore 2.
Movies (26)
- Rango (2011)
- A Haunted House 2 (2014)
- Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)
- Next Friday (2000)
- We Bought a Zoo (2011)
- Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
- Along Came Polly (2004)
- I Love You, Man (2009)
- Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
- Baby Boy (2001)
- Group Sex (2010)
- You People (2023)
- Hubie Halloween (2020)
- The Perfect Man (2005)
- Fist Fight (2017)
- Black Dynamite (2009)
- College Road Trip (2008)
- Netflix Tudum 2025 (2025)
- Deliver Us from Eva (2003)
- Long Shot (2017)
- 35 and Ticking (2011)
- The Salon (2005)
- Urkel Saves Santa: The Movie! (2023)
- Thugaboo: A Miracle on D-roc's Street (2006)
- Light Girls (2015)
- Killing Mary Sue (2025)
TV (29)
- 2 Broke Girls (2011)
- Sherri (2022)
- The Neighborhood (2018)
- That's So Raven (2003)
- The Boondocks (2005)
- Baby Daddy (2012)
- My Wife and Kids (2001)
- The Cleveland Show (2009)
- 'Til Death (2006)
- My Big Fat Fabulous Life (2015)
- The Parkers (1999)
- Loot (2022)
- Young & Hungry (2014)
- The Upshaws (2021)
- History of the World: Part II (2023)
- Worst Cooks in America (2010)
- Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (2000)
- Pictionary (2022)
- The Bay (2010)
- Made for Love (2021)
- Black Dynamite (2012)
- Forever (2018)
- Let's Stay Together (2011)
- Sparks (1996)
- Grown Ups (1999)
- Animal Practice (2012)
- Deal With It (2013)
- Kocktails With Khloé (2016)
- Phat Tuesdays: The Era of Hip Hop Comedy (2022)
Where to start with Kym Whitley
Take the same character twice. Black Dynamite comes first, then Black Dynamite straight after, because the animated version gives Honey Bee far more room than the film does and Whitley is the best thing in several episodes.
Deliver Us from Eva is the other essential, the performance behind the only award nomination on her record. After that, take the animation: Rango uses her for one perfectly judged character voice, and The Boondocks is the sharpest writing she has been part of. For sitcoms, The Upshaws is the current one and the easiest to fall into, while Next Friday is the comedy where a lot of people first noticed her. If you only want the studio version, Happy Gilmore 2 is there and is precisely what you would expect.
The sitcom recurring roles
Her natural habitat, where four lines an episode is plenty. The Parkers and The Upshaws bookend three decades of being the friend who says the thing everyone else is thinking.
The voice work
Animation loves the delivery, and she has been a fixture of adult cartoons for twenty years. Honeybee in the Black Dynamite series is the largest and best of these.
The studio comedies
One scene, one job, done perfectly, across twenty years of American film comedy. She is frequently the funniest thing in pictures that have not otherwise earned her, and she does it on a line or two of dialogue that nobody bothered to write well.
The comedy classics
The films where she gets real room. Deliver Us From Eva earned a BET Comedy nomination and Black Dynamite is the cult favourite that produced a cartoon spin-off around her character.