Michelle Buteau says the hardest part of her early comedy life is now part of her job: turning rivalry into unity. On Nice Talk, she tied that shift to the third and final season of Survival of the Thickest, which premieres July 2.
Nice Talk and the mic
On the podcast, Buteau described a circuit where female comedians were treated like a programmed interruption, not just another set on the bill. “Every time there was a female comedian, it'd always be a male host being like, 'Alright, everyone, we're gonna switch it up, get a difference of opinion.' They'd have to announce that a female's coming to, like, get everybody ready,” she said.
She said the job at a TV news editing desk pushed her toward standup in the first place. Coworkers kept telling her she was funny enough to try it, and the first time she grabbed the mic changed the decision from abstract ambition to career path. “The minute I grabbed that mic, it was like, Oh, this is what I want to do when I grow up... It was just fun and freeing. I felt like I was flying safely. And then I ended up finding my voice and becoming an advocate for not just other people, but for myself,” she said.
Women comics and unity
Buteau also named the part of the business that she now rejects. “There was always, like, this weird competition or something,” she said, adding, “There's only space for one of you guys.” That friction is the point: she is not pretending the old culture was healthy, only that it gave her a sharper idea of what to build instead.
Her response is the platform she has now. Buteau stars in Netflix's Survival of the Thickest and co-created the series, which is based on her 2020 book of the same name. She said that once she had her own show, “we're not gonna be pitted against each other. We're gonna be stronger together, no matter what shape or size, stronger together.”
July 2 on Netflix
The third and final season of Survival of the Thickest arrives July 2, and Buteau is already using that run to define what she wants the series to do. She said she wants her kids to watch and feel pride, and she wants viewers as specific as a queer Kenyan teenager, a plus-size Italian baddie, and a Brazilian person to take something practical from it.
That gives the season a clear commercial and creative job: it is not just ending a series, it is closing the loop on the career arc that took Buteau from being singled out onstage to building a show around inclusion. The open question is how much of that unity will be written into the final season itself, and whether the last chapter gives the same kind of room she says comedy should offer in the first place.
