A husband and wife from Hamlet are gaining attention for appearing in a television commercial for Kayak.com.
Sam and Lisa West are in the newest Kayak.com commercial, which has been playing on TV since Monday.
Lisa said the company held an open casting call at Myrtle Beach in August 2012. The company was looking for a couple who knew how to Shag dance and were 35 years old and older.
Sam started dancing when he was 9-years-old and has won 11 national Shag titles in competition. Lisa started dancing when she was 27-years-old. They won their first big title together in 2010 when they were named the winners of the Sophisticated Swing Division at the US Open Swing Dance Championships, according to the couple’s website SamandLisa.com. They have been married for 12 years and have three children; Sydney, 17, Mack, 9 and Billy, 6.
Lisa said they happened to be at the beach during the time of the casting call, so they tried out for the part. They were selected and began filming in August in Pasadena, Calif., at a house that the company transformed to look like a hotel. They were supposed to film the commercial in one day, but when Sam pulled a muscle in his leg, the couple had to take a short break from filming.
In October, they returned and finished filming the commercial. Lisa said the company flew them, first class, out of Charlotte into Hollywood, put them in a hotel and paid for all of the expenses.
“We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” Lisa said. “We just went with the flow.”
Sam said that being selected for the commercial was a godsend.
The commercial was a huge production, with 50 to 60 people on set, and everyone was professional from start to finish, Lisa said.
She said the hardest part about filming the commercial was dancing while listening to the music, hitting the marks they needed to, and saying the lines all at the same time.
“The easiest part was dancing, of course that’s what we’re used to,” said Lisa.
“We enjoyed the whole process,” she said.
The couple got paid for the commercial and will get paid every time the commercial runs on TV.
Kayak.com is a company that was started in 2004 by the cofounders of Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. The company focuses on making it easier to compare travel websites all at once.
— Staff Writer Laura Edington can be reached at 910-997-3111, ext. 18, or by email at ledington@civitasmedia.com.
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