In Michelle Buteau’s Buteaupia, We’re All Confident, Caring, and Still F***ing Laughing
Michelle Buteau Comedy Special 2020. Michelle Buteau. Cr. Marcus Price/NETFLIX © 2020
You know how when you don’t have anything to do for two weeks, you’re like ‘it’ll get done tomorrow?’ but if you have something to do every day, you’re like, ‘I gotta take care of this hour and do this shit right now!’”
To the question at hand: yes, I do know that feeling. And yet, I feel fully confident saying I don’t know that feeling as well as Michelle Buteau does. The comedian, actress, and host of TV and podcasts has her first hour special Michelle Buteau: Welcome to Buteaupia debuting on Netflix this week (Tuesday, September 29th). But the more attentive of you know this is far from the only thing she’s been working on. A mainstay for the streaming network through parts in films like Someone Great, Almost Love, Work It, Always Be My Maybe, shows like Tales from the City and Russian Doll, and as the host of their breakout reality hit The Circle, Buteau has stayed busy. But all of those experiences have prepared her for this moment – in the most routine of ways, but also in ways she didn’t expect.
“Doing standup for damn near twenty years has prepared a bitch in a way that I never thought imaginable, not just for a standup special, but also in life,” she shared when we talked ahead of the special’s release. She gives a special shoutout to podcasting and her sorely missed shows Late Night Whenever and Adulting, saying that they’re a fantastic playground for transforming stories into jokes:
There are so many stories that just don’t translate to stage. And when you have that ability to just speak the truth in a dark room—and then have it resonate with people that you’ve never met—that’s power. And I didn’t realize there was so much power in truth telling.
Having so many opportunities to refine her persona and style across so many projects, made it easier to take to the stage. As she puts it, it helps her to “speak on [things] in an intelligent way where people can still fucking laugh.”
Welcome to Buteaupia marks a new milestone for the comedian, and it’s one that she tackled with the mindset of “whatever, let’s figure it out.” It’s a strategy she brings to each new medium she enters…and is also one that she brought to the writing of her forthcoming book, Survival of the Thickest: Plus Sized Essays in a Small Minded World. But unlike the special, the book (debuting December 8th) was something that Buteau approached with more nervousness than it seems she did for the other projects:
[I had to think] “Who will this reach, and how will it affect people?” And it’s so much different when it’s in print.
You’re like, “Okay, thank God I get to read this seven to ten times over and definitely edit, edit, edit,” because the way you would talk to your sis at the hair shop or at a boozy brunch is not how you always want to put it in print. It was a lot of, “Oh, that’s how I say it, but that’s not how I mean it!”
Another source of Buteau’s nervousness these days comes from determining where things like her special, her book, and other projects should fall within our collective consciousness during a year that…well, can feel like it has bigger and more important things going on. “We should be stopping for Breonna. We should be helping people to register to vote, we should be educating people about healthcare,” she said, with a weight in her voice that conveyed the heaviness that has permeated so much of 2020. But, she goes on to embrace the framing that others have offered her: “my husband and my friends remind me, ‘Nah girl, it’s good to have fucking content that we can escape to.’”
What Buteau has come to realize though, is that the two things – helping people and equipping them to use their voices, and entertaining them for an hour – don’t have to be at cross-purposes. Each can inform the other, and that’s a genuine wish she has for viewers of Welcome to Buteaupia, to a few types of viewers in particular. At one point she said resolutely, “This is such a wild fucking time, and I just hope that Black women feel seen and celebrated.” And at another, she widens that lens a bit, to include any women who can take the cue from her to figure out what they want to do, and then go for it:
I really hope that people watch the special – you know, Black women, or any woman, especially of a particular size – and they feel worthy, they feel confident enough to go and send that email to a manager or take that headshot or whatever the fuck they wanna do.
And I found it worthwhile to share an extra bit of confirmation that Buteau really does want the same thing for these women as she does her own friends. I received this message from Boston based comedian and friend of Michelle’s Bethany van Delft: “she has kept my head above water at crucial moments, then promptly lit a fire under my ass.” So if you’re in need of that kind of a friend, this special is undoubtedly for you.
Michelle Buteau: Welcome to Buteaupia arrives on Netflix worldwide on Tuesday, September 29th, 2020.
Read more comedy news.
Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.
from Comedy News – The Interrobang https://ift.tt/347JNQu
About tfc
No comments