Country singer, funnywoman Danae Hays went viral on TikTok. Now, she’s spreading the laughs nationwide, including at the Fox

It is not entirely accurate, but also not entirely inaccurate, to say comedian Danae Hays lied her way to the Grand Ole Opry.

Hays made her Opry debut in March, a little over a year after her first ever stand up gig. Though perhaps more known for its connection to country music, Hays said comedy has always had a place at the Opry.

“Country music and comedy, they go hand in hand,” she said. “From the old songs from Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn where they sang ‘You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly,’ it’s always been so rich.”

Though she has released several parody country songs, Hays is primarily known for her comedic characters and prank call videos.

After posting a video prank calling a taxidermist that went viral during the pandemic, Hays became a star on TikTok and Instagram. After racking up nearly 4 million followers between both platforms, Hays took a meeting with CAA, or the Creative Artists Agency.

During the meeting, the CAA team asked Hays if she had ever performed standup before, assuming she had and thinking that would be a great way for her to build a fanbase outside of social media.

Hays, who had never before performed standup, said confidently, “Oh, yeah.” The agency said they would book her at six comedy clubs and see how things went.

Hays remembers asking if she would have 10 to 15 minutes onstage only for the CAA team to tell her that since she would be headlining; she would perform for an hour.

“I was like ‘Oh, perfect!’ and I got in the car and I was like ‘Oh my gosh, what did I just sign up for?’ ” she said.

Hays spent the next month writing her hourlong set. She began by thinking about how she could make the show feel similar to what fans see online but with a new flavor to it. There are some things, she said, that are easier to talk about face to face than through a video, so she worked to incorporate those ideas into the act.

“I tried to break it down in a way that could tell a story about who I am as a person, but also bring levity to it, so when you listen to my show, there’s a lot of depth to it,” she said. “I spent about a month of my life trying to figure out ‘If this was a book, and I only had an hour to tell a book about my life, how would I do it?’ ”

Through a little trial and error, Hays figured it out, headlining comedy clubs and theaters, and the Grand Ole Opry, in her first year as a standup comedian. She brings her aptly named “First Time” tour to the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox on Friday.

Though initially intimidating, Hays said if things had not happened the way they did, getting tossed into the deep end of the standup comedy pool, she is not sure if she would be doing standup today.

Getting to perform in front of a live audience, not her camera, was addicting for Hays. Social media can make people feel disconnected from humanity, she said, but there is no denying the connection when 500 to 1,000 people from different backgrounds, “the good ol’ boys and the gays,” are in the same room together.

“I genuinely believe that the bigger purpose in all this is to bring some sort of unity to people that maybe have a different walk of life than they have, and for an hour they can sit amongst each other and be like ‘Man, we have a lot more in common than we don’t.’ ”

As she has gotten more comfortable onstage, Hays’ jokes and stories have evolved. Writing, it turns out, is her favorite part of the creative process.

The Alabama-born, Nashville-based comedian was a little nervous about taking those jokes and stories outside of the South, telling friends, “When I’m performing in the South, they’re laughing with me. When I get outside the South, they’re laughing at me. But hey, a laugh’s a laugh.”

It would be the same as a New Yorker coming to the South, she said, with no hard feelings toward non-Southern audiences.

“We may not be able to relate to every single thing, but we’re enamored with somebody else’s lifestyle,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

Once she finishes the “First Time” tour next month, Hays will begin hitting comedy clubs in early 2026 to tighten up her next hour of material before she heads back to theaters in the spring.

Having gone from the phone screen to the stage, Hays is hoping to one day find herself on a couple of different screens, TV and film, in the near future. She visualizes everyday about starring in a TV show like her comedic hero Lucille Ball and said she’ll be damned if she does not make that dream come true.

She is also busy working on a memoir about finding the courage to start something new later in life, having started standup comedy at 31 years old.

“That’s a tough age to start something new, because you don’t have the history of doing it, so sometimes you can’t build the confidence to get started later in life,” she said. “I want my book to be a story about not allowing tough moments to define who you are and what you’re capable of.”