Taylor Tomlinson says she admires her hopefulness as a teenager.
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Taylor Tomlinson says she admires her hopefulness as a teenager.
Monica Speer/Getty Images
Comments from wild card Host Rachel Martin: Normally when I watch stand-up comedy, there’s a layer of safety removed. The situation they describe or the story they tell happened to someone else. I don’t get it, but I get why it’s funny.
When I first watched Tyler Tomlinson I laughed, which only happens when you’ve experienced the joke but you don’t see the funny part. When Tomlinson points this out, it’s a special kind of hilarious, with great perspective. That’s a long-winded way of saying it, Tomlinson made me feel seen.
Conservative Christian education? Check. Dead mother. Check? Bad dating history? Check. Hosting some kind of fake game show? Check. Go to the emergency room yourself because you think you swallowed an air sac—or in my case, a nose ring? Check.
How can I no Invite Tomlinson to play our game? Her latest Netflix special is titled have it all. (PS: The trailer below contains a spell.)
Tyler Tomlinson trailer have it all special.
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This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests questions randomly selected from a deck of cards. Click play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What do you admire most about your teenage self?
Tyler Tomlinson: I admire how hopeful she is. I think she really believes in her future. At the time, I was really unhappy and really struggling with depression and anxiety and a lot of other things, but my head felt like a very safe place. I feel like my imagination is very rich and full, and I am full of hope for the future and feel excited and inspired by it. This is something I’ve been trying to reacquaint myself with lately.
Rachel Martin: Just confidence and setting high expectations? Don’t let others limit you?
Tomlinson: I don’t think it’s even confidence, just hope–and maybe a little delusion. I think as an adult you sometimes feel a little bit overwhelmed by everything. It’s easy to feel sad, hopeless, and fearful. I think when you’re a kid you’re obviously more naive, but I think innocence can be a good thing.
Question 2: What emotion do you understand better than others?
Tomlinson: I think, deep down, I’m a very scared person and have learned to adapt to a perpetual fear, which is all anxiety – it’s a constant buzz of fear.
Martin: Has being on stage made you less scared? Because for the rest of us civilians, the thought of making ourselves vulnerable in this way is terrifying. It seems very scary to do what you did.
Tomlinson: This is. This is very scary. But I think you’ll get used to it. I was so scared of how I would feel if I didn’t do it, and I think that helped me overcome my stage fright. I worry that years from now I’ll be saying, “Man, I really wish I had done this.” or “I wish I could have done more with my potential.”
When people remind me how scared they would be to stand in front of thousands of people, it really helps me do other things, no matter where I go, “Why am I scared to talk to people in the grocery store? “There were 3,000 people last night,” you know?
Question 3: How do you stay in touch with someone you’ve lost?
Tomlinson: You and I belong to the “Dead Moms Club,” as they say. I think just talking about them and asking people who have known them longer than you for stories. If you’re so inclined, write creatively about these people and figure out how you’re similar or different from them, or even what they think about upcoming movies and TV shows.
Like, I think my mom would really love Substack [laughs]. I remember talking to my grandma one time and we said, she might have a blog, right? Or even just something like that.
In some ways, Tomlinson said, she feels like she’s fulfilling her mother’s unrealized potential.
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Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Netflix
Martin: What do you and your mother have in common? You were young when she died, but how do people tell you how she came to you?
Tomlinson: She loved writing and I guess I loved writing too. I have three siblings, two of them look like my father and the middle two look more like our mother. I was always jealous that I didn’t look like my mom.
Martin: Me too. My mom is the prettiest in the family—between her and my dad. I also look like my dad.
Tomlinson: So as not to hurt our dad’s feelings, I’m sure our dad is also handsome, but I’ve always wanted to have more in common with her. But you know, she’s an extrovert and I’m not an extrovert. She was very charming, smart, and funny, and I didn’t feel like I had any of those things.
Because she died so young—she died when she was 34, she had been sick for the past two years, and her kids were very young—so when she died, I thought, “Wow, what a waste. What a waste.” “What an incredible man, whose talent and creativity I had so little left, but he was taken away too soon.” So that’s probably a big reason why I try to extend these pieces as much as possible , and with the help of Netflix, I’ve been able to do that.
But I had a moment, maybe a year ago, where I was like, man, I really pushed her part to the limit, because in some ways, I felt like I was the unrealized potential that she didn’t get and just realized, this How sad.
Martin: What’s your mother’s name?
Tomlinson: Angela.
Martin: I think Angela would love Substack, and she would definitely love Tyler Tomlinson.
Tomlinson: I hope so. Maybe she’d say, “You’re such a hack.” [laughs]
Martin: She will be a heckler in all your shows. [laughs]
Tomlinson: “I don’t understand,” she said. [laughs]
