Comedian Well Let You Know When Its Safe to Come Out

Onstage with a mic in her hand, Taylor Tomlinson is shameless. She jokes confidently virtually her sexual activity life, mental affliction and her mother'southward death from cancer when she was 8. What might seem unremarkable — a stand up-up comedian making light of the dark and dirty — is anything merely for someone who was raised in a shame-based religious civilisation.

"Growing upwardly that way, you do become such a people pleaser," Tomlinson said, "because all of your self-worth is derived from being, similar, a good kid, and existence somebody God's going to exist proud of. I am still uncomfortable with it, and I am so, so scared of disappointing people, and I'm so scared of people disapproving of me. I'm working on information technology."

She works a lot of her internal discomforts out in her new Netflix special, "Look at You," which premieres Tuesday and doubles down on material that would accept disqualified her from her early gigs on the Christian comedy excursion. But at 28, she'southward still much the same "old" Taylor: a lilliputian sarcastic, a piddling jaded, empathetically in tune with her audience — and wise beyond her years.

"When I was writing comedy in my 20s, I hadn't nevertheless figured out what was interesting nigh myself," said comedian Pete Holmes. "Just Taylor does it in real fourth dimension. She's like a streaming service — like, how is it coming in and so quickly? Why are you able to live your life and be the narrator of your life simultaneously?"

Comedian Taylor Tomlinson jokes frankly nearly challenges she'south faced.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Tomlinson has been performing stand-up since she was sixteen, when her dad signed up for a class with her near their abode in Temecula as a bonding experience. After several years honing her skills in the Christian globe, she started doing clubs, and before long she was opening for Brian Regan, earning a featured slot on "Final Comic Standing" and doing late-night sets.

In a 2017 appearance on "Conan," she joked near her dad'due south unprogressive views on gay marriage and his strict emphasis on "abstaining from drugs and alcohol and sex activity and enjoyment." Equally an adult, she went on, she'due south notwithstanding sexually bourgeois: "Not that I'one thousand bad at sexual practice, OK? I'll take you know, in bed I am a wild animal. Style more agape of yous than you are of me."

Tame stuff for most comics, but the 3rd rail for a kid from an evangelical Christian home.

"The outset six years," Tomlinson said, "I was, like, squeaky make clean — I could however perform in churches very easily. And so near vi years agone I was similar: I don't want to exist boxed into this anymore."

Taylor Tomlinson performs at the Hollywood Improv. The 28-year-old has been doing stand-up since she was 16.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Her friend Dustin Nickerson, who opens for Tomlinson on the road and has known her for a decade, besides hails from the Christian one-act scene.

"You ever have a couple friend, and they're in a human relationship, and you know it'south going to end pretty before long?" Nickerson said. "That'south how I felt with Taylor and church gigs. I was similar: They're going to break upwardly soon. This doesn't have a long-term trajectory."

Remaining a Christian comic would have been a safer and potentially lucrative choice, Nickerson explained. "Christians can be a bit of a judgy grouping and are quick to tell y'all," he said. "So I know it'due south been difficult. But it is very admirable that she decided 'this is who I desire to be on and off stage,' and her one-act is better for it because it'southward genuine."

Tomlinson is the oldest of four girls. She jokes in her special that she was "an ugly kid with honest parents" and says she became an emotional eater — probably because she was in the middle of a bagel when she found out her female parent died. She's been slowly folding in bits nigh that determinative trauma over the years, but she surfs a full half dozen-minute wave of "expressionless mom jokes" in "Look at Yous."

"Practice you lot think I'd exist this successful, at my age, with a live mom?" she says while assuring the audience information technology's OK for them to laugh during this portion of the evidence. "She'south in heaven, I'k on Netflix — it all worked out."

"That is a real thing I said in therapy," she adds as the applause dies downwardly.

Therapy plays a major function in the special. Tomlinson destigmatizes mental illness as but some other human trait, similar not being able to swim, and equates taking medication to wearing arm floaties in the puddle. She recounts her history with depression — doing a very funny impression of her encephalon during panic attacks — and reveals that she recently discovered she has bipolar disorder.

"People are tackling harder subjects now on stage," she said, "in function because, with the internet, everything's been washed. And then if yous're just doing observational comedy or political comedy, it is really hard to come up with a take or an angle that nobody else has washed."

Still, she'south nervous to reveal her diagnosis to the world.

"I'm like: Oh, you can't have that back later," she said. "I'm embarrassed that I feel that fashion, considering it feels very judgmental, and if I'm judging myself so how is that not judging other people?"

Growing up, nobody in her life talked about getting professional person aid for low.

"You're similar, 'I have a chemical imbalance in my brain,'" she said, "and they're like, 'No, Satan has your encephalon in a cage.'"

That internalized shame still rears its caput, simply Tomlinson finally has a good therapist and the right mood stabilizers to feel some calm and stability.

Less stable is her human relationship with her father. Cracks had been forming since the fourth dimension around that "Conan" gear up and broke wider after her first Netflix special, "Quarter-Life Crunch," which came out in March 2020 just every bit the pandemic hit.

Sitting in a berth at the Hollywood Improv earlier a recent set, Tomlinson got quiet and chose her words advisedly.

"I recollect that if you lot are a very conservative Christian parent, and your kid deviates from what is so important to you lot, that is very painful," she said. "And then information technology's probably 100 times more painful when they are a public figure, for lack of a better term. I detest referring to myself equally a public figure, merely, you know ... we got the bluish checkmark."

Fifty-fifty when she's navigating painful waters, she can't aid merely detect the humor.

"My extended family unit was very cool and nice and supportive," she continued, "then were my siblings, who I'm very shut to. My dad, as far every bit I know, did not spotter information technology. And we, at this point in our lives, do not really have a relationship. It'due south something that makes me very sad."

One-act is all about getting as close to crossing "the line" as possible, Nickerson said, and "the line she dances on is, 'How much sad function of my story tin can I share with y'all, and y'all non get-go to experience sorry for me? But understand that I'grand on the other side of this, and I'm working through it, and we tin express mirth near it.'"

Tomlinson is developing a film with Depth of Field, the production company backside "The Bye." It's more often than not about the decease of her female parent and how she's candy that grief, and although not a literal biopic, it volition be emotionally true to her story.

In it, she'll play a version of herself. Slipping into a mock under-her-breath vox, she said: "Yous have to say that and then they'll let you play yourself. Because otherwise they're similar, 'We should become a existent actor.'"

Information technology'due south not all sadness in her act, where her wit and pinpoint delivery reveal both an incisive writer and as well a talented thespian. But her fast-growing fan base — she headlines theaters now — clearly resonates with how she'southward metabolized the shame of Christian purity culture and other painful legacies of her past into a new, hilarious energy.

Taylor Tomlinson, whose new Netflix special is titled "Look at You," is developing a motion-picture show with the product company Depth of Field.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

"If there'south anything I tin tell y'all from being an ex-vangelical comedian with a podcast," said Holmes, who had a similar upbringing, "thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in my career have been like, 'You're talking almost my life.'"

"I want there to be reconciliation with her and her father," Holmes added, "but while at that place isn't and she's in those gritty, prodigal son years, we're going to benefit from that, and there'due south going to be a lot more healing and more than love from that than in that location is from this two-person conflict. And that sort of seems to be how the universe works. I mean, that's what resurrection is."

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-03-04/taylor-tomlinson-netflix-comedy-special

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