Taylor Tomlinson
I think once I found stand-up, it was like, 'Oh... this is so much better than acting! I get to perform but I get to do whatever I want. I don't have to say anything I don't want to say. There's nobody here to let down or be let down by. It's all on me up here.'
I was a really shy, scared kid. I was really, really anxious to go on stage for the first five years that I was doing this. But, once I was up there, I felt like myself. I felt like, 'Oh. This is who I actually am. This is who I want to be.'
I think that if you are a very conservative Christian parent, and your kid deviates from what is so important to you, that is very painful. And then it's probably 100 times more painful when they are a public figure, for lack of a better term.
There were churches that would not let me tell jokes about being abstinent. I'm like, 'I'm promoting the thing you like!' But they wouldn't want you to even refer to anything like that.
I missed that bubble of invincibility that a lot of young people have, particularly in college. When people look back and they go, Oh, man, I took so many risks. I was so, so dumb. I almost died three times, I don't have any of those stories because I'm waking up every day like, Is today the day? Is today the day?
I thought 'Girls' was amazing. Did I relate to a lot of it? No. Those were not my experiences.
I watch old clips sometimes and I'm like, I think I'm making people sad.
I thought I was going to be comedy 'Tiger King.'
My goal was to have a Netflix special by the time I was 30.
I wish I were better at observational or political or social commentary, and I'm just not.
Especially with the Internet now, there is no such thing as being unrelatable.
You do want people to say you're wise beyond your years and you know what you're doing. That's the age-equivalent of 'I'm not like other girls.' I'm not, I'm different.
I didn't go up in a comedy club until I was in my late teens, because I didn't know where to get a fake ID or anything, and I'm such a good kid.
Some people will say, 'Oh, you're very wise beyond your years,' and that's just a nice way of saying, 'You hate yourself, and you should!'
I started doing stand-up in high school and knew I was funny, but I didn't think it was something I could actually do full-time until I was maybe 19 or 20.
Acting is embarrassing for me. Stand-up had to be taken away for me to consider it.
You can't practice stand-up alone in your room. You can't find out if a joke works by asking two of your friends.
The best comedy advice in the beginning of my career was get onstage every night, as many times as possible. It's the only way to get better.
Life, for better and worse, does not go the way you might have envisioned when you were 16. And I would not change anything about my life.
Everyone on the Internet is a celebrity to someone at this point. There are people on TikTok who have never put out anything besides like daily vlogs, and if I saw them in a coffee shop, I'd be like, 'Oh, my God, it's you!'