For Taylor Tomlinson, getting kicked off the church comedy circuit was a blessing in disguise
The comedian tells Tom Power how she went on to host her own late-night show and land several Netflix specials
Taylor Tomlinson started her comedy career at 16-years-old, performing mainly for church congregations. Growing up in a religious family meant she could easily translate her own experiences into jokes for Christian audiences.
But it only took one tweet to wreck her budding career on the Christian comedy circuit: "I'm like a wild animal in bed," she wrote, "way more afraid of you than you are of me."
"I got fired from what was my last steady church gig," Tomlinson tells Q's Tom Power. "They weren't mean about it, they weren't rude about it, they were just like, 'Look, we have kids in our audience. We can't have anybody on the tour that even has a whiff of innuendo to them.'"
At this point, Tomlinson had dropped out of college and was already re-thinking her own relationship to her faith. The firing got her thinking even more.
"It did trigger that shame that religion feeds on," she says. "I just thought, 'I never want to feel this way again and it's not worth it.' That was the nail in the coffin for me."
Tomlinson started performing more and more at comedy clubs and colleges. Luckily, she didn't have to change her material too much.
"[The other Christian comics] had a lot of church jokes and Bible jokes, and I never really did that," she says. "I had a joke about abstinence, but that was as far as I would go because I wanted to be able to do my set anywhere, not just in churches."
As she started to blow up on the comedy scene, she continued to speak about her religious upbringing — even to these secular audiences. Tomlinson identifies as a "personal comedian" because she mines her own experiences for her comedy. Her current tour, Save Me, explicitly explores her complex relationship to Christianity, as well as her sexuality.
Tomlinson's relatable comedy caught the attention of Conan O'Brien, who invited her to come along with him on tour.
"It made me feel like I might actually be good at this, that one of my childhood heroes thinks I'm good enough to bring on tour with him," she says.
Tomlinson's popularity has grown, earning her three Netflix specials, her latest one, Have It All, having debuted earlier this year. In 2023, she had the seventh highest grossing comedy tour of the year and was the only woman to crack the top ten.
She's also the only woman in late-night television right now. Comedy legend Stephen Colbert personally chose Tomlinson to host CBS's After Midnight, which he executive produces.
"I really am constantly thinking about the fact that most people will not get to experience what I get to experience," she says. "I'm very, very grateful and it's never lost on me."
The full interview with Taylor Tomlinson is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Taylor Tomlinson produced by Glory Omotayo.
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