Desi Banks | |
---|---|
Birth name | Desi Terrell Banks Jr. [1] |
Born | [2] Atlanta, Georgia, U.S, | May 9, 1993
Medium | Social media, stand-up |
Years active | 2012–present |
Website | Official website |
College football career | |
Position | Wide receiver |
Personal information | |
Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) |
Weight | 187 lb (85 kg) |
Career history | |
College | Morehead State (2011–2012) |
High school | Cedar Grove (Ellenwood, Georgia) |
Desi Terrell Banks Jr. (born May 9, 1993) is an American comedian and actor. He played two seasons of college football for Morehead State as a wide receiver.
Banks was born and raised in the Eastside of Atlanta, Georgia. [3] He said he was "always the funny kid growing up" and influenced by comedians Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. [3] [4] He went to Cedar Grove High School in Ellenwood, Georgia, where he competed in track, baseball, and football. [3]
Banks played football in college for the Morehead State Eagles. As a freshman and sophomore in 2011 and 2012, he recorded fourteen receptions for 162 yards and two touchdowns in fifteen games. [5] He transferred and joined the Georgia State Panthers football team but did not get any playing time. [6] He graduated from Georgia State in December 2015 with a bachelor's degree in sociology. [3]
Banks began posting comedy sketches to Vine in 2012. [7] As his videos went viral, he decided after graduation in 2015 to build a career in comedy because "football didn't work out". [3] He expanded to other platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and posted three or four videos daily. [3] [7] As of 2023 [update] , he has over 8 million followers on Instagram, and his YouTube channel has accumulated over 2 million subscribers and over 750 million views. [8] [9] The Hollywood Reporter has ranked him at least as high as No. 3 on its Top Comedians list. [10]
Banks started doing stand-up comedy in 2017. [3] [4] In 2018, he founded a production company, Desi Banks Productions, that makes online videos. [3] [7] He has acted in films such as Will Packer's Little (2018). [11]
Year(s) | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Cream X Coffee | Groomsman #1 | TV series; episode: "Black Love Matters" |
2017 | Love by Chance | Dante | Film |
2017 | La Vie Magnifique De Charlie | Record Store Customer | Film |
2019 | Little | Postmates Delivery Guy | Film |
2021 | Haunted Trail | Zay | Film |
2022 | Sherman's Showcase | Fonk the Freak | TV series; episode: "Murder at the Shrind" |
Tyler Perry is an American actor, filmmaker, and playwright. He is the creator and performer of Mabel "Madea" Simmons, a tough elderly woman, and also portrays her brother Joe Simmons and her nephew Brian Simmons. Perry's films vary in style from orthodox filmmaking techniques to filmed productions of live stage plays, many of which have been subsequently adapted into feature films. Madea's first appearance was in Perry's play I Can Do Bad All by Myself (1999) staged in Chicago.
Bryan Callen is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer and podcaster. He studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Callen initiated his career as one of the original cast members on the sketch comedy series MADtv. Callen played Coach Mellor in The Goldbergs and reprised the role as a main character in the Goldbergs spinoff series Schooled. He is also a co-host of The Fighter and the Kid podcast, alongside Brendan Schaub.
Brad William Henke was an American actor and National Football League (NFL) and Arena Football League (AFL) player. He was best known for his role as Corrections Officer Desi Piscatella on Orange Is the New Black, for which he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2016.
Tiffany Cornilia Haddish is an American stand-up comedian and actress. Her breakthrough came in with a leading role in the comedy film Girls Trip (2017), which earned her several accolades and was included on The New Yorker's list of the best film performances of the 21st century. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2018, and The Hollywood Reporter listed her among the 100 most powerful people in entertainment in both 2018 and 2019.
Raymond "Ray" William Johnson is an American internet celebrity best known for his eponymous YouTube channel and his web series on that channel, Equals Three. In 2013, the channel surpassed 10 million subscribers and had over 2 billion views, making it one of the most watched and subscribed to channels at the time. For a 564 day period from June 2011 to January 2013 the channel was the most-subscribed YouTube channel, during which it also became the first channel to reach 5 million subscribers. Johnson left the series in March 2014 but continued to produce it and other web series like Booze Lightyear, Comedians On, and Top 6, the first two of which were later cancelled.
Kumail Ali Nanjiani is a Pakistani-American stand-up comedian and actor. He is known for his role as Dinesh in the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley (2014–2019) and for co-writing and starring in the romantic comedy film The Big Sick (2017). For co-writing the latter with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, they were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2018, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role in The Twilight Zone executive produced by Jordan Peele in 2019.
Eric Samuel André is an American comedian, actor, TV show host, writer, producer, and musician. He is best known as the creator, host, and co-writer of the Adult Swim surreal comedy series The Eric Andre Show (2012–present). His other notable roles include Mike on the FXX comedy series Man Seeking Woman (2015–2017), Luci on the Netflix series Disenchantment (2018–2023), and the voice of Azizi in the remake of The Lion King (2019). He also performs music under the stage name Blarf.
Ryan Kyle Coogler is an American filmmaker. He is a recipient of four NAACP Image Awards and four Black Reel Awards, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award.
Nash Grier is an American Internet personality. He became known for his online videos on the now-defunct video sharing service Vine in early 2013. By 2015, Grier was the second most-followed user on the platform.
Ronald Kyle Funches is an American comedian and actor. Born in California, Funches spent his early life in Chicago before relocating to Salem, Oregon, as a teenager. He began his comedy career in Portland, Oregon, at age 23. After moving to Los Angeles in 2012, he began appearing as a guest on several comedy series, including @midnight, Mulaney, and Kroll Show.
Hasan Minhaj is an American comedian, writer, producer, actor, and television host. Much of his comedy involves Indian culture and the modern American political landscape through the use of satire, observational comedy and dark comedy. His Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and two Webby Awards. In 2019, he was listed in Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Nate Bargatze is an American stand-up comedian.
Elizabeth ShailaKoshy is an American YouTuber, media personality and actress. Her main YouTube channel has amassed almost 17 million subscribers, and her two channels have a combined total of over 3 billion views. She has received four Streamy Awards, four Teen Choice Awards, and a Kids' Choice Award.
Dulcé Lazaria Sloan is an American stand-up comedian and actress. She is a senior correspondent for The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
Sarah Anne Cooper is an American author and comedian based in New York City. She worked in design for Yahoo! and in user experience for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides while also performing stand-up comedy. Cooper left Google to focus full-time on writing and comedy. Her first two books, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings and Draw What Success Looks Like were published in 2016. Her third book, How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings, was published in 2018.
Kenneth Mathew Sebastian is an Indian stand-up comedian. He first rose to prominence through a YouTube channel that broadcasts clips of his stand-up shows, devotional song covers, in addition to original skits, garnering 152 million views since 2008. He has toured the United States, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Australia. In 2017, he produced an hour-long comedy special for Amazon Prime. He performs primarily in English, switching to Hindi for comic effect. He was also a judge in Comicstaan, a comedy reality show. He released his special The Most Interesting Person In The Room on Netflix in 2020.
Mark Angel is a Nigerian comedian, scriptwriter, and video producer. He is best known for the Mark Angel Comedy series of shorts on YouTube, often featuring child comedians such as his cousin, Emmanuella Samuel, his niece, and her cousin "Aunty" Success Madubuike. Angel's YouTube channel was the first African comedy channel to reach one million subscribers. Mark Angel has a wife who also acts within his productions with his fellow actors, which are Mr. Azu, Baze10, Ebere, The Law, Mimi, Kingsley Brown.
Shane Michael Gillis is an American stand-up comedian. He is co-host, along with fellow stand-up comedian Matt McCusker, of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, the most subscribed-to podcast on Patreon. In 2019, the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal named Gillis one of its "New Faces".
Adam Ragusea is an American YouTuber who creates videos about food recipes, food science, and culinary culture. Until 2020, Ragusea was a professor of journalism at Mercer University.
Ben Brainard is an American stand-up comedian and social media personality. He gained attention on TikTok and other social media with his sketch series The Table, in which he acts out conversations between various American states. As of March 2024, he has 2.9 million TikTok followers.