Comedian Taylor Tomlinson has sealed a deal with Netflix for her next two standup specials to premiere on the streamer.
Tomlinson is currently touring her latest show, which will tape later this year in Washington, D.C., for a 2024 premiere date, reports ‘Variety’. Her hour-long standup debut, ‘Quarter-Life Crisis’, premiered on the platform in 2020, followed by ‘Look at You’ in 2022.
“That’s a level of security that you don’t get very often in this business,” Tomlinson told ‘Variety’.
“It’s a huge weight off your shoulders… I feel incredibly grateful and lucky.”
Tomlinson noted that her next special will be shot at the end of this current tour (currently dubbed the ‘Have It All Tour’), right around when she’s about to turn 30. And much of her material this time out explores what it’s like to be at that life crossroads where parts of your life are taking off, while other parts are not.
“I’m a pretty personal comedian,” she said. “I’m not super topical or political. I am generally writing about things happening in my own life, in what I hope is a very relatable way. And the question I think everybody around my age grapples with and my friends around me are grappling with, which is comparing yourself to everyone else.
“Why do I have the relationship I want but I can’t figure out my career? Or, why do I have my career stuff figured out, but I don’t have the relationship I want? Maybe I’m changing my mind about what I want, or do I want to have kids? Everyone I know is having that struggle.”
Tomlinson describes this next special as a change of pace from ‘Look at You’, which earned raves for its deeply personal look at mental health and her mother’s death. “That was very heavy stuff to get into, and harder to stick the landing,” she said. “And so, this hour, I wanted to be a bit lighter for a minute.”
Tomlinson saw her star rise in 2020 when ‘Quarter-Life Crisis’ launched on Netflix right before the pandemic started. “I remember during lockdown I was like, ‘well, I might have missed my shot. I don’t know if this is going to come back. I don’t know if people are going to remember this special came out.'”
But they did. ‘Variety’ soon named Tomlinson to its list of 10 Comics to Watch. “I was not selling tickets before that first special came out,” she said. “And after it came out, we were selling out all the time. It was night and day.”
Meanwhile, Tomlinson said she’s still at work on a Village Roadshow Pictures film based on her upbringing, which she’s writing with Taylor Tetreau and will star in, for director Paul Weitz.
And she continues to kick around series ideas with Netflix – but isn’t eager to sacrifice standup for it.
“What it really comes down to is, I love touring so much,” she said.
“Every weekend, I’m gone. And if you want to make a TV show or a movie, you have to take a significant amount of time off from touring. Touring is the most fun and the most lucrative thing for me to do and for a lot of standups to do.
“You don’t really ever have to do a show or a movie, so all the projects that I’m developing or I’m interested in are things that I really love and think could be great,” she added. “Because I’m just so happy with where I’m at with standup. This is all I ever wanted.”