Survival Of The Thickest
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A warning, this episode contains explicit language. ♪

The delightful comedy series Survival of the Thickest is about an up-and-coming stylist whose professional and personal ambitions go sideways when she finds herself newly single. With the help of her best friend, she recalibrates her life and steps outside her comfort zone to varying results.

It stars the charming comedian Michelle Buteau, who also co-created the series. The show just returned for a second season, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the series. I'm Aisha Harris, and in this Encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about survival of the thickest.

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Joining me today is podcast producer and film and culture critic Kate Young. Welcome back, Kate. Hi, happy to be here. Also with us is NPR contributor Serena Torres. Hey, Serena. Hey, Aisha. And rounding out the panel is journalist and author of We See Each Other, a black trans journey through TV and film, Travelle Anderson. Hey, Travelle. Hello. Hello.

So, Survival of the Thickest stars Michelle Buteau as Mavis Beaumont, an assistant stylist on the cusp of her big break. Her longtime boyfriend Jacques, played by Taylor Saleh, is an established fashion photographer helping her make the right connections in the industry. He's also cheating on Mavis as she discovers to her horror. And now in her late 30s, she has to start all over, find a new place to live and a new way to rise within the ranks of her career.

Now, for emotional support and sound advice, Mavis leans on her best friends Marley and Khalil, played by Tasha Smith and Tone Bell. And she manages to land a gig styling Natasha Karina, an older and severely prickly ex-supermodel played by Garcelle Beauvais. Michelle Buteau created the series alongside Daniel Sanchez-Witzel, who previously produced shows like New Girl and My Name is Earl. And Survival of the Thickest is streaming on Netflix now.

So we all really, really dug this show. Travelle, why don't you kick us off? Yeah, you know, I've always been one of those girls who like cares a little bit less about the relationship stuff. And I'm like, how was work? You know, like, who are you navigating the corporate ladder? You know, that side of so many of these characters aren't often, it's just not often explored in any sort of depth.

Because, you know, I guess we want to focus on the trials and tribulations of love, I suppose. But I've just always found the career stuff more interesting. So I love that we get a chance to, like, see that. Like, when you're starting something kind of new, you've got this potential connection that you could exploit. But, like, you don't really want to because it makes it kind of, you know, messy and foolish. And I love that, you know, the show also allows my favorite part about the show. Okay. Yeah.

is, you know, we've got some Black famous people. Yes. Especially Tasha Smith, right? Yeah. Garcelle Beauvais, before she was a real housewife of Beverly Hills. Okay, we knew her as Fancy on the Jamie Foxx show. Jamie Foxx, yes, yes. So I love that as well. Yeah, yeah. I actually want to play one of my favorite moments of the show.

from the show because you mentioned Garcelle Beauvais and I've never watched the Red House Rise franchise so she that's not how I know her but like yes I know I know but on the J.B. Fox show you know she was really really fantastic and I think her character to me is just so interesting because she's

And I would even love to see if there were a second season, even more of her and her journey, because she was a famous supermodel in the 90s. And when we think of 90s supermodels, we think rail thin, the Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss type. And now she's older and she her body is no longer what it used to be.

And so I think the way the show really kind of plays with her own insecurities of being older and also trying to move in and understand her body as it is now and love her body as it is now is really interesting. But the part that I want to play involves her character and...

Mavis talking about a dog wedding. It's great. And I just want to play this part because it's just this great example of how the banter on the show often kind of ping pongs in a way that feels fun. And Michelle Buteau's face also, which you can't see, but like, just imagine you're seeing it when you hear this clip. Kristen, Karina. Kristen, your dog, her dog, your dog, Kristen. Kristen.

Hi, is getting married. She's getting married. To whom? Tootie Delaine. OK. Tootie Delaine. And Tootie Delaine is also a dog.

I love the way, like, you see Mavis processing this and just speaking it aloud and saying it multiple ways. I just think that's kind of the beauty in many ways of Michelle Buteau and how she carries it. And also how, you know, Garcelle Beauvais really commits to this role and she's completely serious about this dog and thinks that, you know, Mavis should also be excited about it. I don't know.

It's just one of those things I think was really fun. Yeah, it feels very real in that way. Like, I feel like I would have that reaction to somebody telling me that they dogs about to go get married, you know? And so it just feels like, oh, this is my homegirl who somebody I know in a very real way. And I think that like makes it an even more enjoyable experience. Yeah, I think the line reading is kind of so fantastic. And like their chemistry is,

is like popping off the screen. And one of my favorite kind of subplots is the way that Marley, who is like the best friend, this like high-powered, she's like a lawyer. She's kind of like somebody corporate. I couldn't tell what she was, but she's giving, you know, CEO. She's wearing suits. I love it. And her other childhood best friend, Khalil, who is more of like the artsy type, are...

initially at odds and slowly kind of like making their way towards each other and developing their own dynamic. And I just felt like they played that beautifully. And I just love the way the dialogue just feels so lived in and feels so fresh and so present. And like it's jumping off the screen. Can I tell y'all my favorite line real quick? Yes. When they said, what in the brown titty Ted talk is going on? I love it.

I was like, yes, absolutely. That's her catchphrase, I feel like. I love it. There's a bit, I think, in one of the early scenes where she says something like, oh, it's the drumstick special. And the camera loves you. Is that right? Well, it must be my drumstick emoji physique.

It's meaty on top, nubby on the bottom. Very delicious. That's what it is. And I thought that was so funny because it's the kind of like very specific, you know, metaphor slash imagery that would never occur to me. And it was really funny. And I think there's a lot of that in the show where it's extremely specific. It's really, really funny. And it takes you in a direction where you understand something.

specifically who this character is because a lot of it is that she's like she's really smart she's really quick she's really clever she's always ready with a cute comment and that's something that's hard to do so I really appreciate that and I thought it was really really cute and it was one of the things that immediately kind of endeared her to me yeah

I'm curious what you all think about, you know, we've mentioned a few lines and the drumstick line is also a great visual. How does the way that the show talks about or confronts fat phobia and those sorts of things land for you? Because I think it could have been very easy for this show to lean on Mavis feeling insecure about her body, but like she doesn't. And I think kind of the genius of this is the fact that

Her job is to be a stylist. And one of the things that she wants to do is help other people who might feel more insecure about these things feel better about themselves. Does that land for you or feel true or interesting at all? 100%. I think one of the things that really stuck out to me is precisely that, you know, I don't think there's

any mention at any point in the series that she is self-conscious about her body or that she has a problem with it or any way or that she ever did have a problem with it, to be honest. And what I like about how it treats this is that instead of leaning on the easy, like, body positive, like, we all want to love ourselves thing,

She's very specifically trying to help her clients feel at home in their bodies. And it's much more about feeling okay about what they look like and feeling okay about what their bodies feel like. And I thought that was really, really interesting because I think with the body positive movement we've had over the last decade or so, it's gotten really easy to rely on, you know, pat,

catchphrases or whatever about loving yourself. And you can't love yourself into being part of the dominant body aesthetic. Like it's not about how you feel about it. It's about the wider world and how it treats fat people. And I think this really captures that really, really well. And I think that by having Mavis not have those issues with her body, you end up dispensing with all of that back and forth and you

We get to focus on what her actual philosophy is in terms of dressing her clients and making them feel good. It reminds me of Monique's movie, Fat Girls, if anyone has ever seen that, right? Of course. Okay, great. I'm among family. Love that for me. Yeah.

But it has a lot of those similar vibes where it's like, you know, it's a fat black woman who loves who she is. The only people who really kind of have an issue with her body are like, it's the outside world, right? There's a joke at the top of the show in which she's like, you know, he's cheating on me with a skinnier version of me. It's a light-skinned girl with curly hair or whatever. But I think it has that similar feel.

And it allows us as an audience to see a fat person on TV. And also, right, there are so many other body types as well that are being kind of uplifted and centered through.

from fatter bodies to, you know, trans bodies and queer bodies, et cetera. Yeah. I love also that this is a sex positive show and that like the camera didn't shy away from like showing Michelle Buteau, you know, getting groped, getting loved on, like showing her like under the sheet, showing her in like undressed in lingerie. Like I,

I loved that they didn't have her in makeup for a lot of the scenes when she was at home. I thought that was such a great detail. Her skin, my goodness. Like, whatever the regimen is. She mentions the freckles at one point, too, and I'm like, yes, 100%. I also, I loved how I saw that Netflix budget went towards the costuming and the wardrobe. And I feel like, you know, her message of...

confidence is like embedded in the clothing too. I feel like the wardrobe was so colorful, so beautiful. It didn't feel like she was trying to style people to like settle into what was available on like the market. She was really making people like

beautiful and fun. And I feel like the clothing was so, so vibrant. And I feel like it really just kind of like tied it all together for me. Yeah. Nicole Byer pops up at one point, which I love seeing. Her and Michelle Buteau have perfect, perfect chemistry. And at one point, I think she's, she wants like sexy lingerie or whatever. And I was looking at the lingerie and I was like, that's cute. We're always getting put in a Christmas red or like a clinical beige, but this?

Beige? Girl, I don't know her. I am a walking, talking bag of Skittles. And you know I had to put that on my line. I love that. Yeah, it's such a fun show to look at and to just take in. And one other thing I want to note is that I was very happy to see that, you know, Serena, you mentioned earlier, the budding friendship between Khalil and Marley. But it doesn't ever tilt into, like, will they or won't they? Like, there's no sort of triangle happening with...

within this new friend group, I was like, good, you all have your own things happening. - And I thought there would be, to be honest. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's such a trope, right? Like that is often how things work out and I'm glad that it kind of avoids that. And each character kind of has their own journey while still just managing to be friends without all the sex stuff.

Because that's life. Yes, yes. We can be friends and not have the sex stuff there. Yeah. And we were talking earlier about the balance between, you know, the work stuff and the love stuff. And I think one of the, like, overall things about this series that really impressed me is simply that

We got to have a really beautiful romantic story for a flat girl on TV. Like, I think that she manages to become not quite the usual rom-com heroine in the sense that we've evolved from that a little bit. But, you know, she gets broken up with on that same night. Like, she's finding someone new. She does not have any problems finding people to date. It's never presented as though she would ever have a problem finding someone to date. Right.

And I really appreciated that because we got to see her have all of these really charming, lovely moments. I mean, I swooned multiple times in the scenes with Luca. I mean, it's just they were adorable together and they had great chemistry. And I loved that she was able to fairly early on find someone who was interested in her and interested in investing in her.

And I feel like that's just not a story that you tend to get for Black women, especially fat Black women. And I think that is partially based on her own, Michelle Buteau's own life. Her husband was from another country and he was like visiting New York City. And so similar to the Luca character who's played by Marwan Zoti. It's got a similar vibe from my understanding of how she met her husband in real life, which I think is really, it's kind of cool. It's cute. And it shows, yes, like she's...

She has found happiness in her own life, and I think that helps to be able to create something like this. Even though Mavis is clearly going through a lot of her own thing, she understands that there can be and should be a happy ending for people who look like her. Can we talk about the setting? I feel like my favorite New York trope is friends who live, like, 90 minutes away from each other on the train meeting up all the time. Seriously! Yeah.

I think she's in Crown Heights. And it's like very obvious that Khalil is in Harlem. And I was like, oh, my God, there's no way that Khalil can afford a taxi uptown after like, you know, spending a night out at a drag club. It's so funny to me. He's an artist. Like he teaches art classes. He's not rolling in town.

He's not quite balling. Speaking of tropes, actually, I was really entertained by her roommate and the kind of over-familiar white woman that we tend to see a lot. Yeah, that dynamic between the roommate, Jade, played by Lisa Trager, and Mavis is really, really funny and fascinating. I personally, there's a lot of it that I was like,

Girl, please try again. But I also really appreciated that towards the end of the series, they give her a moment where she's allowed to be right. She comes in and Mavis finds one of her friends sleeping in her bed, which is obviously quite upsetting and would freak me out too. But when she comes out to confront her roommate, she basically says, where else is he supposed to go? Your things are everywhere. You've taken over all of the public spaces and you're very adamant that I not touch or move anything.

And I started off that scene on Mavis' side, and by the time it ended, I was like, you know what? That is on you. That's a very inconsiderate thing to do. You moved in with her, and you've taken over her space, and it isn't fair. And she's allowed to want that kind of boundary. You're very insistent about your own boundaries, but you're not respecting hers. Even as she has cornrows, you know. Oh my god. Yeah.

rubbing olive oil all over herself. I love the way that Mavis was allowed to mess up and be wrong and that we weren't always supposed to take her side and that we were just kind of like watching her journey, like evolving, finding her footing, getting back on her feet. I loved that. Well, it sounds like we all would highly recommend this show if you haven't checked it out already. And if you have, you need to let us know what you think about Survival of

the thickest. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Thank you so much to Kate Young, Serena Toros, and Trevelle Anderson for being here. This was fun. I enjoyed it. Absolutely. Thank you, Aisha. Thank you, guys. This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Jessica Reedy. Research was performed by Susie Cummings and Christopher Intagliati. And Hello Come In provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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