Michelle Buteau says the comedy world that first greeted her tried to turn women into a novelty act, and she says that lesson helped shape the work she does now. As the third and final season of Survival of the Thickest prepares to debut July 2, she is tying her early standup experience to the way she now builds space for other women instead of competition.
When Buteau started going to comedy shows, she said male hosts would announce a female comic as a kind of change of pace, as if the room needed warning before a woman took the mic. That memory still sits with her, but not as a grievance she has carried in the same direction all these years. It became part of the reason she says she wanted to make her own lane wider than the one she found.
She said coworkers at her TV news editing job kept telling her she was funny and should try standup. The first time she grabbed the microphone, she said it clicked immediately: comedy was what she wanted to do when she grew up. She described that moment as fun and freeing, a feeling of flying safely, before finding her voice and then becoming an advocate for other people and for herself.
That path was not exactly smooth. Buteau said there was a weird competition among women comics when she was coming up, the kind of crabs in a barrel bullshit that tells performers there is only room for one of them. She said she is glad it happened to her anyway, because it made her decide that when she got her own comedy show or TV show, women would not be set against each other. In her telling, that choice is the point: stronger together, no matter what shape or size, and done with the old idea that one woman’s success has to crowd out another’s.
That thinking now runs through Survival of the Thickest, the Netflix series Buteau stars in and co-created, which is based on her 2020 book of the same name. She said the show provides jobs and support to other people in entertainment, turning the career path that once boxed her in into one that can widen for somebody else. It is a practical answer to the rivalry she remembers, and it gives her a platform to do exactly what she says comedy should do: make room and still make people laugh.
Buteau also said she wants the show to travel beyond one audience and land with people around the world who can see themselves in it. She talked about her kids, a queer Kenyan teenager, a plus-size Italian baddie, and a Brazilian person as the kinds of viewers she hopes will connect with it, each finding a different reason to feel seen. Her goal, she said, is simple: get people motivated to do something for themselves and still leave them laughing. The final season arriving July 2 makes that mission more immediate, but the larger point is already plain. Buteau turned an industry that once framed women as a break in the program into one that, for her, is built to keep more than one voice in the room.
