Taylor Tomlinson

Taylor Elyse Tomlinson (born November 4, 1993 ) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, and television host. She has released three Netflix stand-up specials: Quarter-Life Crisis (2020), Look At You (2022) and Have It All (2024). She is the host of the CBS late-night show After Midnight, which premiered on January 17, 2024.

Early life
Tomlinson was born on November 4, 1993, in Orange County, California. She and her three younger siblings were raised in a devout Christian family, which features prominently in her comedy routines. Her mother died of cancer in 2002, when Tomlinson was eight, and her father remarried a year later. She was raised in Temecula, California, where she graduated from Temecula Valley High School.

Tomlinson briefly attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, before transferring to a community college in the San Diego metropolitan area, in order to be closer to comedy clubs and keep sustaining her career. She then attended California State University San Marcos, but eventually dropped out to pursue her budding comedy career full time.

Career
Tomlinson began performing comedy at age 16, after her father signed them both up for a stand-up class. She performed in church basements, school venues, and coffee shops. She was 19 when she decided that comedy would be her career.

Tomlinson became a top-ten finalist on the ninth season of NBC's Last Comic Standing in 2015 and was named one of the "Top 10 Comics to Watch" by Variety at the 2019 Just for Laughs Festival. She has appeared on The Tonight Show, Conan, and various Comedy Central productions. She developed a sitcom for ABC in 2017, but it was not picked up for a pilot. She performed a fifteen-minute set on an episode of the Netflix stand-up series The Comedy Lineup in 2018. Between November and December 2018, she served as one of the opening acts for Conan O'Brien's tour Team Coco Presents Conan & Friends: An Evening of Stand-Up and Investment Tips.

Tomlinson's first Netflix stand-up special, Quarter-Life Crisis, was released in March 2020. Later that year, she toured with fellow comedian Whitney Cummings on the Codependent Tour. She was placed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in December 2021.

In February 2022, Variety announced that Village Roadshow Pictures had acquired the rights to a film based on the life of Tomlinson, set to be directed by Paul Weitz, where she would serve as a screenwriter and co-producer (together with Taylor Tetreau), while also starring in the movie. Her second Netflix stand-up special, Look At You, was released in March 2022.

In September 2023, she made her debut at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Her third Netflix special, Have It All, was filmed in Washington, D.C. at the end of November 2023 and was released on February 13, 2024. Among comics in the Top 10 list of the highest-grossing comic tour for 2023, Tomlinson was the only woman and performed more shows (130) than anyone else on the list.

On November 1, 2023, it was announced that Tomlinson would host After Midnight, a CBS revival of former Comedy Central panel show @midnight, which premiered on January 17, 2024. She later revealed that she had agreed to take the job upon the condition that she would only have to record the show three days a week, in order to keep performing comedy gigs on the weekends.

On June 16, 2024, Tomlinson served as one of presenters at the 77th Tony Awards, held at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater in New York City, and aired on CBS.

Social media
Tomlinson has gained further success by using TikTok, having become the seventh-most-followed female comedian on the platform in 2022. Her popularity helped her acquire a sponsorship from Hotels.com, which she promotes on TikTok.

In 2020, Tomlinson was part of the podcast Self-Helpless, together with fellow comedians Kelsey Cook and Delanie Fischer. The following year, she began hosting a short-term video podcast, titled Sad in the City and distributed on YouTube.

Influences
Tomlinson has said her two biggest comedy influences are Brian Regan and Maria Bamford. She said about them, "I loved Brian Regan and Maria Bamford when I was younger—and still do. Regan is just one of the greats, and also the nicest person. And you could listen to him with your whole family and know everyone would enjoy it. I love everything Maria Bamford does. She's so different from anyone else out there, and she talks about mental health in such a hilarious, vulnerable, amazing way." She has also gone on to cite Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Conan O'Brien, Bert Kreischer, and John Mulaney as comedians she idolizes.

Personal life
In her stand-up material, Tomlinson has frequently referred to her experiences of mental health issues, including depression, panic attacks and night terrors; she said she had been struggling with depression and anxiety since her adolescence, while also noting how she felt "very hopeful about the future" as a teenager, citing her "very rich and fulfilling" imagination as a main factor for it. In her 2022 special Look at You, she discussed being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

In her first special, Quarter-Life Crisis, Tomlinson said that she had once got engaged, but had called the marriage off before the taping of the show. She was in a relationship with fellow comedian Sam Morril from March 2020 to February 2022.

In her 2024 special Have It All, Tomlinson came out as bisexual, joking about her experiences trying to date women, and discussed her three siblings, including a trans brother and a lesbian sister. As of May 2024, she's in a relationship with another woman.