Taylor Tomlinson Is Back Where She Started

It’s not hyperboleto call Taylor Tomlinson a wunderkind. In her 20s, she became a top-grossing touring stand-up, was tapped to host a late night show (late CBS effort After Midnight) and developed her own material more than plenty of her peers will over a lifetime. It helps that she all but committed to the path by 16, initially performing as a Christian comic.

“I’m 32 now and I’ve been doing this for half of my life,” says Tomlinson. “It’s crazy to think about.”

In the decade since Tomlinson departed the church circuit — and the church — her relationship with religious material has waxed and waned. But it’s on full display in her fourth Netflix hour, Prodigal Daughter, which premiered Feb. 24 on the streamer. She even filmed it in a church. But like almost everything about Tomlinson, her takes on the topic have evolved.

“When I go back and I watch old jokes that I did about Christianity, I think they’re pretty unforgiving compared to this hour,” she says. “This is coming at it from a place that’s more nuanced and playful and even affectionate.”

Speaking during a recent episode ofThe Hollywood ReporterpodcastI’m Having an Episode(Spotify,Amazon Music,Apple), Tomlinson dug into her new hour, the tough decision to walk away from the late night gig she loved and the entertainer she’d trade places with for a day. (It’s not Beyoncé —and for a very shrewd reason.)

There’s a moment early on in Prodigal Daughter where you say your team was nervous about you leaning too far into religious material in this special and tour. Were there legitimate apprehensions? And, if so, what were they?

My team has never given me notes, creatively. So that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. When we were doing the tour name, Save Me, and the artwork for the tour where I’m wearing crosses and stuff, I think they were just like, “Well, OK, can we make it clear to people that it’s not all that? And that we’re not just bashing religion the whole time?” And we’re not, but I understand. Once they saw the hour, they got it. Their job is to think of it from more of a marketing perspective. So they were doing their jobs. If you go back and watch my other specials, all of my jokes about religion are coming from a very wounded place because of the way I grew up. I had a lot of resentment toward a lot of the things that I was told and taught growing up in church. I had to work through a lot of that.

You famously got your start on the church comedy circuit. What little I know of it is that those comics are mostly middle-aged white, married guys. You were 16. What does that set look like?

Honestly, it doesn’t look great. (Laughs.) It looks like a lot of jokes about not going to prom and being a loser and feeling ugly and observational stuff about my family. Obviously, I had no life experience. A lot of the jokes I was doing were apologizing for how young I was, because I could feel it making people nervous for me in the audience — which I think is completely fair. I would be nervous if a 16 year old got onstage and was like, “I’m a comedian.” I think that I was pretty self-aware and maybe that was a strength of mine back then. But, obviously, I was not good. People always ask about starting in churches, because it’s such a weird origin story, and for years I was embarrassed of it. Part of the growth in this new hour is me talking about it in a way that is grateful and appreciative, as opposed to ashamed and embarrassed.

But how many of your peers can say they were performing when they were 16? It’s not like you had a lot of options of where to do it. I would imagine it’s just churches and coffee shops?

One hundred percent. I was doing school fundraisers and stuff. I probably did some corporates, because I was clean. You know what it taught me, though? It taught me that there were a lot of different ways to make money as a stand-up comedian. You don’t have to just be in the clubs — in theaters, if you’re lucky. You can be a corporate comedian. You can be a church comedian. You can be a cruise ship comedian. Working clean for the first five years probably made me a stronger writer. I used to be really ashamed of my comedy background, and now I think it’s actually sort of weird and cool and probably did me a lot of favors.

You’ve done churches, corporate gigs, cruises, clubs and arenas; who is the most unforgiving or difficult audience?

It depends on the corporate. You always assume you’re gonna bomb, and then sometimes they’re great. “Wow, didn’t see that coming.” You’re really just a dancing clown for hire. You go in knowing that. But if you pull it off, you feel like an amazing comedian. I would say cruise ships are really tough, because everybody’s coming to see you essentially for free. You’re just another activity that’s available on the boat.

You’re a water slide.

Exactly. And you’re not as good as a water slide. Most people were there with their families or on their anniversary, and I was like 21, talking about dating being weird. I usually did a lot of crowd work on cruise ships. The other comic that would be on it with me, he’d have an hour about this cruise ship. And I was like, “Oh man, I am not good at this.” I think those were the hardest for me. Churches, if you’re clean, they’re pretty nice, but you have to be squeaky clean. I’m not talking like, “Send your transcript to The Tonight Show and have them approve it.” I’m talking insanely clean: no innuendo, no light swearing, don’t get too dark or negative. But if you can stay within those parameters, the audience tends to be supportive.

I’ve heard you say that it was hard to say goodbye to the money when you were transitioning out of church work. At the risk of being gauche, what is a successful church comedian pulling at a show?

I never got to a point where I was selling tickets at churches, so I really don’t know. But I can tell you, when I was 21 and I was opening for big church comics, it was like $1,000 a show. That was hard to lose. At a certain point, I told my manager that I couldn’t do churches anymore: “Just don’t even tell me if we get offers.” The last one she told me about was $3,000 for like 30 minutes. When you’re 22, have two TV credits and don’t sell tickets, that’s pretty crazy. That’s a lot of money. But I just couldn’t do it. I’m not a Christian and I’m not what they think they’re paying for.

In talking about personal stuff onstage, in respect to yourself or your friends and family, you’ve also seen your profile rise considerably. Have you had to redraw any lines of where you’re willing to go or what you’re willing to divulge?

I don’t know if it was this hour or Have It All, but there were some jokes that I did — like a whole chunk, eight minutes of jokes — that were about a relationship I had with somebody in my family. They were working really well, and I was proud of them. But I was dreading telling them every night. I just thought, “You know what? I don’t need to do these.” I’m writing my own script. It’s up to me what I say up there. So, I just stopped and felt instantly better. When I was younger, you’re so desperate for material that works and you’re so desperate to make it, that if you write a strong joke that works all the time … You’re like, “Well, I’m going to do it. I don’t have a choice. I have to do it.” As you get older and become more confident as a comedian, you go, “All right, [I’ll tell] something else. It’s OK.”

I want to talk about After Midnight. You decided to move on and focus on stand-up. Then, CBS announced the show was ending. And a few months later, CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and basically heralded the end of late night as we know it. It’s a lot.

Isn’t that crazy? I couldn’t believe they canceled Colbert. I’m interested in what you think about the state of late night.

I understand that it is, financially, a very tough model to work with. But when there’s still such a level of prestige and quality, that rationale alone feels like a cop out. That’s just my opinion.

It’s interesting how the argument is like, “Nobody wants to watch people talk,” People are watching hours of people talking on podcasts on YouTube and now Netflix. I’ve been doing all these podcasts and it is so interesting, too, because you go to some studios and it’s … it is a TV show. They have a team of eight or nine people, 20 lights and a beautiful setup.

Getting back to After Midnight, can you talk a little about that decision and those last months?

It was tough. I had decided that I couldn’t come back before the show was renewed. It was sort of a muddy timeline, because the decision had been made to be renewed — but I didn’t know about that. So it wasn’t as simple as, “They told us, ‘You’re being renewed.’ And I went, ‘No, thank you.’” That’s not what happened. And that show was so much fun to do. Our writers room was amazing. They came up with so many different games and jokes for so many different people every episode. I really couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to go to work with every day, and I was excited that I was in a position to host it three days a week and then still tour. From the beginning, I was always like, “If I can do both, I will do both.”

It just reached a point where I was touring, I was doing press for the show, I was doing the show and I had some health stuff going on. I just couldn’t do both things anymore. I so badly wanted them to just hire someone else to host it, because I think there were so many comedians who would have been absolutely amazing hosts for that show. And it’s unfortunate that they didn’t go that direction because in the two seasons we did, we got it to a format that CBS seemed to feel good about. It’s a very different show than the one that I signed on for, and I was really happy with and proud of where we all got it. The hardest decision I’ve ever made professionally, by far, was to not come back for a third season. But I couldn’t sustain it.

What surprised me about the cancellation was that the format seemed like a workable evolution for late night. Panel shows are less expensive and so big in other countries, especially the U.K.

I thought so, too. I’m really sad that it doesn’t exist anymore, because so much hard work went into it. And it was such a great opportunity for comics to get in front of a new audience and get a TV credit and make jokes in a way that didn’t burn their material onstage.I’m really grateful that I got to be a part of it for as long as I did. But when Colbert got canceled, it was like, “Holy shit, really? How long would we have been on then if they were going to cancel Colbert?”

OK, I’m going to let you go, but if you could trade jobs with anyone in the entertainment industry for a day … who would it be and why?

Maybe Greta Gerwig, because I want to know what she’s doing with Narnia. The Narnia books were so important to us growing up. Maybe I would just walk around and try not to answer any questions. Is it like a Freaky Friday thing —where I’m still me but in her body?

That’s a good question. No, you are swapping in as yourself. Greta comes to you and she’s like, “Listen, I have to have some dental work done. If you could just direct for one day, that would be fantastic.”

I love that you’re like, “By the way, Greta Gerwig does not want to trade places with you.” (Laughs.) I’m no longer switching places with her. I’m filling in while she gets a root canal.

She’s going to do stand-up later in the day, after the Novocaine has worn off.

Got it. OK, then [I pick] Greta Gerwig or like, anyone who can sing. I just want to know what that’s like. But you don’t want to say Beyoncé. Everybody says Beyoncé. But then you have to live the rest of your life knowing what that feels like and go back to being you. That might be devastating. That might destroy me.