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The profile · researched 22 October 2026
A Netflix near-miss, twenty sets a week, and the Cartersville comic who refuses to leave Washington
Winston Hodges spent a decade grinding Virginia and D.C. open mics before reaching the final six of Netflix's Funny AF in May 2026. He did not win it, and it barely mattered: he now has an agent, a manager and a club tour booked into the summer of 2027.
Cartersville, Short Pump, and a contest he entered on his first night
Hodges was born in Richmond and raised around Cartersville, a thinly populated patch of central Virginia. He went to school at Fuqua School in Farmville and then to Virginia Tech, and he was nearly 25 before he ever stood in front of a microphone. The first time he did, it was a competition: Clash of the Comics at the Richmond Funny Bone in Short Pump. He won it. That was about eleven years before the spring of 2026, which places the start of all of this somewhere around 2015.
Richmond held him for roughly five years. He worked the clubs, and he built his own rooms as well, putting together a monthly bill of regional comics at The Fishin' Pig in Farmville. He also cut an independent album during his first two years playing The Southern Café & Music Hall in Charlottesville — the sort of self-released artefact most comics quietly bury. In 2020 he moved to Washington to do comedy full time, and he has been based there ever since; booking sheets list him out of Arlington.
The material comes off the biography fairly directly. A Christian household, family, the mechanics of dating, and his work with children who have special needs — a background in special education that turns up repeatedly in his sets alongside mental health and straightforward political argument. The shorthand his own publicity uses is southern charm plus edgy wit, which is accurate enough as far as it goes and tells nothing about the actual jokes.
A dead father in 2020, twenty-two tracks in 2021
The first piece of work that reads as a statement rather than a document is Grieving Productively, produced in 2020 and put on YouTube at his own expense. It is built around the death of his father, and it goes at the subject through the administrative indignities — death, funerals, the arrangements that have to be made while a family is at its least capable. His own materials bill it as award-winning without naming the award, so the prize itself should be treated as unverified; the special exists and is free to watch.
Already Aware followed on 12 November 2021, recorded in front of a live audience and released through Helium Comedy Records, the Rhizome Comedy imprint. It runs to 22 tracks and functions as a clear-out of roughly six years of club work: 'Bad Dates and Serial Killers', 'Gay Conversion Therapy', 'Antivax Jesus', 'Waffle House', 'The Intimidator', and a six-minute 'Arming Teachers' that is by some distance the longest thing on it. The deal arrived by accident — the label caught him on a bill alongside the comic Chris Alan and offered to record him on the spot.
Speaking to RVA Magazine on 22 November 2021, Hodges was blunt about what the record was for. 'A third of the album is stuff that I don't really do anymore, but am proud enough of to want it recorded,' he said. Two years later, in August 2023, he was still playing $15 shows at The Southern in Charlottesville on a four-comic bill. The album had not changed his life.
Forty-four comics, two live episodes, and six left standing
What changed it was a casting director who found him online. The approach came in August 2025, followed by an application process that ran about three months, and Hodges was picked from a field of roughly 2,000 to 3,000 applicants as one of 44 comics to appear on Funny AF with Kevin Hart. The series premiered on Netflix on 20 April 2026 and rolled out weekly, built around showcases and callbacks at American clubs, before closing with two live episodes on 4 and 5 May at 9pm Eastern, during which subscribers voted in real time by remote or phone. The prize was a Netflix stand-up special and cash.
Hodges made the final six. Netflix's own profile of the cast described him as a Virginia comic with southern charm, surprising vulnerability and edgy wit, and noted his standing at New York's Comedy Cellar. Days before the finale he told Richmond's WTVR that winning 'would absolutely change the trajectory of my career... it could catapult my career to heights that I never, ever even thought possible.'
He did not win. The title went to Ron Taylor, a 34-year-old from Detroit, whose Netflix special Escalate came out of it. Hodges was not among the last four. What he did get was Chelsea Handler reportedly calling him her number one on the panel, and — per a Washington City Paper profile in July — Keegan-Michael Key and Handler both describing him as an 'OG original'.
Where he stands in October 2026
By early June 2026, reporting in his home county's paper, the Kenbridge-Victoria Dispatch, put the aftermath in concrete terms: an agent and a manager signed, spots at the Comedy Cellar, and an Instagram following that had gone from about 38,000 to roughly 76,000. Talks with Kevin Hart's production company were described as under way, with nothing announced since. He headlined the Richmond Funny Bone — the room where he won that first contest — on 8 July 2026. 'My life has completely changed,' he said. Management is now Rachel Helix at Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
The Washington City Paper piece of 21 July 2026, by Bryce Taylor Rudow, is the most useful document on how he actually works. It has him doing something like twenty sets a week across Washington, timing each one to the minute so he can hop from a club to a basement bar and back, and treating open mics as workshops rather than gigs. 'I love tinkering with my jokes; I love changing it up. That's what open mics are for. They're not for killing.'
The same profile covers the decision he has not made. Comics at his stage generally move to New York, Los Angeles or Austin. Hodges has stayed, and argues Washington should be built into a destination scene in its own right, with several respected clubs and established comics bringing newcomers through. 'D.C. pushed me to get everything that I have,' he said. 'It just feels not right to leave.' The night after that piece ran, 22 July, he played the DC Comedy Loft; the early show had sold out and the 9.30pm was going at $29.50.
The road: clubs, two-show nights, and a long book
The touring is club touring, not theatres, and the diary is deep. Listings for the current run take in Punch Line Sacramento on 1 November 2026 and Punch Line San Francisco on 3 and 4 November, Brooklyn Improv on 13 November, Helium Buffalo on 17 November and the Syracuse Funny Bone on 18 November, then three nights in the Red Room at Cap City Comedy Club in Austin from 27 to 29 November with 7.30pm and 9.45pm shows.
December runs through Comedy at The Carlson in Rochester on the 3rd, Huntsville Levity Live on the 10th, three nights in the Broadway Room at Birmingham's StarDome from the 11th to the 13th, the Toledo Funny Bone on the 18th and Dayton on the 19th. The 2027 dates go further out than most comics at his level can fill: Tacoma on 16 January, four nights at Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis from 20 to 23 January, Comedy Zone Greenville and Greensboro on 30 and 31 January, Hilarities 4th Street Theatre in Cleveland on 4 March, Springfield and Tulsa on 13 and 14 March, Fort Wayne and Appleton on 24 and 25 March, and back to the Comedy Loft in Washington on 15 July. Entry prices start around $28.
The billing travels with him. Comedy Works in Denver, where he played the downtown room on 13 September 2026, led on the Funny AF top-six finish, the Don't Tell Comedy secret sets and more than 30 million combined online views — a promoter's figure, not an audited one. The opening credits are more checkable: he has warmed up for Michael Che, Dave Attell, Demetri Martin, Mark Normand, Fortune Feimster and Derrick Stroup. College bookers are offered PG, PG-13 and R versions of the set, which says something about how much of the act is load-bearing filth.
The show, now
A Hodges headline date in late 2026 is a club booking rather than a production: a single mic, a club-supplied local host and feature act rather than a touring support, and a slot of roughly 90 minutes — the Comedy Works Downtown listing in Denver on 13 September 2026 ran 7.00pm to 8.30pm, with VIP tickets buying priority seating in the first five rows. Weekend bookings are two-show nights, 7.30pm and 9.45pm in the Red Room at Cap City in Austin across 27–29 November 2026, 7.30pm and 10.00pm at the StarDome in Birmingham from 11 to 13 December, and four nights at Acme in Minneapolis in January 2027. The set is drawn from his Christian upbringing in rural Virginia, family, dating, his years working with children who have special needs, mental health and political argument, delivered at pace; the Washington City Paper account of his working method — about twenty sets a week, timed to the minute, with open mics used to rework jokes rather than land them — explains why the hour tends to arrive tight rather than loose. He offers PG, PG-13 and R versions to college bookers, so the club shows are the unfiltered end of the range. Demand has visibly moved since the Netflix run: the early show at the DC Comedy Loft on 22 July 2026 sold out, with the 9.30pm at $29.50, and entry prices across the current tour start around $28. No substantial press review of the current headline run has been published, so the recent evidence is ticket movement and the endorsements comics have offered — Chelsea Handler reportedly ranking him her favourite on the Funny AF panel, and both Handler and Keegan-Michael Key calling him an 'OG original'.
Researched from winstonhodges.com · wtvr.com · netflix.com · washingtoncitypaper.com · kenbridgevictoriadispatch.com · rvamag.com · winstonhodges.bandcamp.com · comedy.tickets
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