‘DeRay Davis: How To Act Black’ On Netflix: DeRay Davis Tries To Determine Exactly How Famous He Is

You’ve seen DeRay Davis onscreen before: dying on Empire, surviving a horror movie (the remake of The Fog), hustling his way through two Barbershop movies, and appearing in more than a couple dozen other TV and film projects — in addition to voicing sketch characters on two of Kanye West’s biggest albums.

“I’m trying to figure out my famous. Who am I?” Davis asks in his first Netflix comedy special, DeRay Davis: How to Act Black. “I know I’ve been in some shit, because I Googled me.”

Davis also used to count Kevin Hart as a roommate, back when Davis could make fun of Hart’s baby-sized shoes. Does Davis want Hart’s fame now? He’s not so sure, because as he jokes, he still has evil thoughts and doesn’t want to become so big of a celebrity that he cannot act upon them, even if just in jest.

Though he filmed his special in Atlanta, Davis finds himself returning time and again to his roots in Chicago, whether it’s to make fun of white casting agents for suggesting Davis wasn’t black enough in his audition for a Chicago gang member, or to describe filming scenes for Empire in a dangerous neighborhood in the Windy City. The truth about acting black, as he says, isn’t in your voice or your wardrobe, but in your attitude. “Acting black is being broke, but acting like you’re rich.” His lighthearted anecdotes about his hometown prompt him to acknowledge that he should say or do more about the recent uptick in gun violence there, although he stops short of getting too political, calling Trump ‘President Dude’ instead. “Yes, ‘President Dude.’ I will not say his name and give him power.”

Davis will, however, make fun of his cousin Carl for sounding gay when as kids, they all played Guns and Gangsters in the hood. He’ll also joke about how black people racially profile each other when it comes to certain occupations. And he’ll certainly mine the story of the zoo gorilla that grabbed a young boy who fell into its enclosure, for more than its worth, imagining how they boy will behave when he grows older.

His more insightful material, though, delves into Black Lives Matter, police relations and mass shootings.

Davis boils both sides down to a simpler code of conduct: “Awareness. Help each other.” Discussing multiple mass shootings from recent years, Davis urges the audience to put themselves in the shoes of bystanders in each scenario, wishing we’d say something if we saw something. “Stop snitching? I’m telling!” he retorts. He wistfully recalls his own childhood, never worrying about interacting with cops, only to see how both police officers and black people seem terrified of one another now. His solution is so simple you wonder why no police department hasn’t thought of it and enacted it already.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch DeRay Davis: How To Act Black on Netflix