Michelle Buteau To Become First Woman To Film Comedy Special At Radio City Music Hall

Michelle Buteau represents curvy, Caribbean women in all the best ways, but now she’s about to make history. While catching up with the Survival of The Thickest creator at the 2024 NAACP Image Awards, the comedian revealed she will become the first woman—Black or otherwise—to tape a comedy special at Radio City Music Hall. The untitled program will begin filming this summer.

“I have another special coming out. We’re going to be filling it at Radio City Music Hall [on] June 6,” she shared. “I will be the first woman and woman of color to be taping a special there, so that’s why I’m saying these things [representation] matters. You got to lay the groundwork for other people to come and think they can do it and know that they can do it.”

Last week, Buteau teased what’s next for her on-screen character, Mavis Beaumont—and her hilarious best friends (played by Tone Bell and Tasha Smith)—in season two of Netflix’s Survival Of The Thickest.

“It’s bigger, Blacker, bustier, bi**hier than before. All the B-words. It’s adulting next level,” she said at a pre-NAACP Image Awards event. “So, I feel like whatever you connected to, I just can’t wait for you to see what has happened.” Bell also shared that they’re coming back “with a bang,” and he is gearing up to get back in the gym in preparation for a spicy sex scene.

Bell and Buteau also praised the series’ positive representation of platonic relationships between men and women. “That’s one thing that when the show first started, that’s what everybody’s wondering—will Michelle and Tone be love interests? [We’ve] been friends for 15 years. I don’t know why the TV landscape acts like it’s not possible. There’s so many of us that have a good male friend or female friend and it’s about time we see it and in our hue.”

In addition to her upcoming special and next go-round of a comedy series based on her memoir of the same name, Buteau will star in a new film titled Babes. She’ll star alongside Ilana Glazer, who plays Eden, a woman who gets pregnant from a one-night stand and has to rely on her best friend, Dawn (Buteau)—a married mother of two—for support. The Pamela Adlon-directed film debuts on May 17.