This interview was conducted on July 13, 2023, before the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Michelle Buteau moves through a room with the kind of contagious energy that makes it impossible to imagine her ever feeling down. When she arrives to our in-studio interview, she has our team laughing before she’s even through the doorway. Her confidence is palpable, every pose she strikes during our photoshoot is filled with the personality that has carried Buteau through a successful comedy career, a hosting gig on Netflix’s The Circle, a beloved podcast titled Adulting, appearances in Someone Great, Broad City and Always Be My Maybe and now, her own Netflix comedy series, Survival of the Thickest.
That said, Buteau’s life and career has not been without challenges. Viewers of Survival of the Thickest, which is loosely based on Buteau’s collection of personal essays of the same name, could probably guess as much. In it, Buteau plays Mavis Beaumont, a 38-year-old, plus-sized Black woman trying to restart her life as a struggling celebrity stylist after she gets cheated on by her long-term partner.
George Chinsee
The decision to dismantle a character’s life in her late 30s isn’t one many other show creators are making but for Buteau, it felt logical because, as she says, “I’ve lived it.” She tells us, “You know, sh-t happens between 38 and 40 for us. I’ve noticed people think it’s like 21 or 30.”
“But like, there’s some sort of cut off in your life and not when you turn 38. Not like a cut off like, you can’t do this anymore, it’s the cut off of: ‘are you still going to be doing the same shit that you’re unhappy with?’” Buteau notes that, in these years, she started to realize that doing anything she was unhappy with was a true waste of her time. It was a period filled with many internal questions: “Are you going to still be with that person because you don’t want to be alone? Are you going to live in that neighborhood you’re not happy with? Are you going to take that trip you’ve been talking about for years?”
Naturally, those doubts and the internal crossroad Buteau references make a great starting point for a TV show, especially a comedy. “I just feel like it was like a very natural, but also important place for my character to start, because I’ve been cheated on a lot my life,” Buteau says. “I only really know what it’s like to rebuild your life after somebody’s blown it up.” Survival of the Thickest is just that — a woman’s journey through out of the rubble of a life-crumbling period in an upwardly mobile corner of Black New York.
George Chinsee
Buteau, who is a mom to twins born in 2019, says that reaching her 40s and entering motherhood has made her more defiant about using her platform to create real change. “What has really changed me is understanding the importance of speaking up and speaking out and being your real true ally with whatever platform you might have,” she tells us. “It was so dope being like, ‘I want a trans Black woman to be the head of this drag restaurant.’”
Buteau’s status as a Black plus-sized woman already makes the show’s diversity power stand out, but she didn’t stop there. The show is fantastically intersectional with representation from various body types, LGBTQ+ representation and more. She says she was clear about her wants, recalling one particular demand, “How about we just hire three assistants for this photoshoot? And they’re all non binary. How about we just do that? Just put out the call. You know, I hate to say ‘be the change you want to see.’ But if you have the platform, just take a chance.”
Buteau praises her co-creator, Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, who she calls the “Erin Brockovich of storytelling” for helping her fight for her voice and others but overall, she acknowledges that she didn’t have many fears when it came to shining a glaring studio light into the inner corners of her life. “Even if it was nudity, or a hard conversation with my character’s parents, or even having like a messy hookup. I’m just like: ‘This is what it is. So I don’t want to shy away from it,’” she says, “Man, you only get the one life and there aren’t a bunch of these opportunities happening.”
George Chinsee
When we meet, it’s less than 24 hours before SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing strike commences. Buteau is releasing her show in a difficult landscape. Though, as someone who published her essay collection in the height of the pandemic, Buteau is familiar with an uphill climb. “I’m so tired of being in competition with a virus, an election, capitalism,” she says, “It’s like ‘Can’t a b-tch just make something and celebrate?” Of the looming strike, Buteau acknowledges that “things have to change” and, after making her first show, knows all too well the limitations of low budgets for writers, cast and crew.
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Still, she’s optimistic that she’s done enough to get her work out there. “I know that people need a palate cleanser from whatever’s happening in the world, so they find my sh-t. And I know that joy is the biggest act of resistance,” she states. And, in some ways, Buteau’s biggest win came long before viewers tuned in to see Survival of the Thickest. She notes, with a celebratory smile, “I feel like it’s so f–king dope because I’m a size 18-20. I’m not even supposed to be the lead of the show. And yet, here I am. And that’s something that’s a big deal. Like, it’s a really big deal.”
Survival of the Thickest is streaming now on Netflix.
Before you go, click here for more celebrities who’ve spoken out about being body-shamed.
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