HaHa Davis

Comedian · Verified

Detroit comedian and actor known for his Big Fella character.

#40Hub rank

7.7MInstagram followers

About HaHa Davis

HaHa Davis is Detroit’s comedy export: the actor and comedian whose “Big Fella” character — the ultra-confident, hilariously delusional everyman — made him a viral sensation, a hip-hop favorite, and eventually a Hollywood prospect. His path is the modern comedy blueprint in miniature: start with a phone, build characters the internet can’t stop quoting, and let the industry come to you.

Carlos Davis was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and his first dream wasn’t comedy at all — it was football. He went off to school in Virginia to play, got homesick, came back to Michigan, and enrolled in community college. The pivot came casually: a friend told him he was funny and should try comedy. Davis brushed it off — “Man, I ain’t no comedian” — but started posting skits to YouTube in 2012 anyway. When Instagram introduced 15-second video in 2013, he jumped in, and the clips spread like wildfire. Vine soon after. The characters did the rest.

The Big Fella is the brand: sketches built on unshakeable self-belief colliding with reality. The formula is deceptively simple — a regular guy, supremely confident, navigating situations his confidence absolutely does not warrant — and Davis commits to it completely. “When your friend disrespect his mama” became one of his signature bits, and the catchphrases stacked up: “Hey Big Fella,” “Guard,” and above all 2017’s “Dis Finna be a breeze,” which escaped the internet entirely and became a genuine pop-culture sensation, adopted on social media by everyone from Snoop Dogg to Tom Brady. The Snoop connection deepened into an actual music video collaboration built around the phrase, and Davis has spoken about the mentorship of “Uncle Snoop” as a defining relationship in his career.

Hip-hop claimed him early and never let go. In 2015, Chance the Rapper featured Davis on three tracks from the landmark mixtape Coloring Book — “No Problem,” “All Night,” and “Blessings” — and had him narrate the Magnificent Coloring World Tour as the character Carlos the Lion. For a comedian who grew up on Martin — Davis has said the Fox sitcom is his foundational comedy text, the thing he’s watched and rewatched for years — landing on a Chance record was the equivalent of a co-sign from the culture itself. The Source profiled him in 2017 under the headline “Hip-Hop Loves HaHa Davis,” and it wasn’t hyperbole: rappers didn’t just follow him, they cast him.

The acting transition was natural, because the character work was already acting. Davis made his big-screen debut in Meet the Blacks 2 (2021), appeared in an episode of the Detroit-set comedy Detroiters, cut promos for TBS’s Drop the Mic, was featured in Forbes, and even became a playable character in the NBA 2K18 video game — a surreal milestone that says everything about how deeply he’d penetrated the culture. In 2019 he launched “D-Boy,” a series on Comedy Central’s digital platform, and the first episode pulled over 2 million views, breaking viewership records for the platform. The Big Fellas of Comedy Tour across 2018 and 2019 sold out rooms all over the country, proving the internet audience would pay for the live show. In 2020 he expanded into publishing and fashion simultaneously: the debut comic book “Beyond Me” with Verse Comics USA, and his clothing and lifestyle brand, “Fellas.”

Ask Davis about his comedy philosophy and he’ll tell you something most viral comedians won’t admit: “My style has never been about trying to be the funniest person on the internet. A lot of people aim towards being a funny person on the internet. I just aimed towards being myself and giving people something that they can use in everyday life.” That’s the engine of the whole operation — quotable, remixable, endlessly applicable bits that fans drop into group chats and captions. His inspirations read like a comedy Mount Rushmore: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Kevin Hart, and the sitcom Martin itself. The Big Fella isn’t a generic archetype but a fully realized person — the kind of guy everyone knows — and that recognition is the comedy’s engine.

Detroit’s comedy lineage runs through artists like Davis: performers who built it themselves, on their phones, for their people, until the industry had no choice but to come to them. From Vine clips to the big screen, from catchphrases to comic books, HaHa Davis proved the modern comedy path — create the character, build the audience, set the trends, and let Hollywood catch up. The Big Fella’s confidence was never in doubt. Neither was the audience’s.

And the machine keeps moving. Davis still tours, still posts, still mints catchphrases — the animated Big Fella series he began developing years ago remains the obvious next frontier for a character built for cartoons. Whatever form it takes, the formula won’t change: Detroit roots, total commitment, and jokes engineered to live in the audience’s everyday vocabulary. The Big Fella’s confidence is unshakeable — and so is the audience’s love.