Michelle Buteau Embraces Her Main Character Syndrome

Michelle Buteau is all too familiar with “the best friend”: the one whose job it is to support the main character’s search for love, to deliver a couple one-liners before exiting stage left. Buteau played this role for the likes of Ali Wong in Always Be My Maybe, Jennifer Lopez in Marry Me, and others. So when she finally got the chance to play leading lady — in a Netflix show she co-created, based on her book of the same name, no less — it was a big deal.

“When I was little, I never dreamed about what my wedding was going to look like, I just dreamed about this,” Buteau tells Bustle of her new series, Survival of the Thickest. She jokes, “What happens next? Do I just die?”

Perhaps it feels especially personal because so much of what viewers will see is drawn from Buteau’s own life. It centers around a down-on-her-luck stylist named Mavis (after Buteau’s own grandmother) who finds herself forced to start over at 38. Her best friends, Khalil and Marley, are based on two of Buteau’s own. Once, her real friends came to set and met their onscreen counterparts. “They almost had the same outfits on,” Buteau says, adding that her friends loved the experience and what they’ve seen of the show. “They’re excited — as they should be because it's a f*cking honor,” she deadpans. “It’s a f*cking honor, bitch.” Sometimes, being the sidekick is actually pretty sweet.

Below, Buteau discusses how Mavis is and isn’t like her, the importance of having intimacy coordinators on set, and the merits of stone fruits.

In the show, you’re newly single. In life, you’ve been happily married for many years. What was it like imagining yourself in today’s dating landscape?

It was really dope because when my character gets cheated on — I have been cheated on. Most of the women in my family have been cheated on. And so, my definition of starting new is coming from that place of, “I thought this was going to be my life, and it’s not.” And just devastation and having to rebuild. It’s just like, if your relationship ended in a hurricane, how you going to pick up them pieces and move on? You have to. I always say, “Open your head, your heart, and your legs to love because you never know.” But be safe, you’re too cute for bacteria.

Mavis puts [herself] out there in a way that she doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable with, but definitely wants to try. And it was very important for me, for her to have a character that loves on her body. I’m a size 18, 20. I love all my inches. And why are we out here just having these big girls feel so thankful that somebody finds them attractive? It’s f*cking stupid. So, I’m just like, “We’re going to have fat sex. It’s about body positivity. Let’s get some intimacy coordinators because we’re going to have some sex scenes and they’re going to be real, and people are going to like these National Geographic t*tt*es, and we’re going to see how we’re going to light them. Thank you.”

And with that came the diversity in the crew, because I wanted very thoughtful heads of my departments. So, my director of photography is an amazing woman named Dagmar [Weaver-Madsen], and she’s also a plus-size woman. And then, all my directors were female too, and they’re like, “We just want you to feel comfortable and beautiful.” Just find people that lift you up. You don’t have to go for the copy-and-paste, cookie-cutter, “I have all these credits on IMDb.”

You mentioned working with intimacy coordinators. What was your experience with what they brought to the set?

It was amazing, because there’s going to be no f*cking around on my watch. You come to set, you’re going to feel loved and seen and safe. And if you need a minute, go take your minute and come back. And we’re going to talk about everything we’re going to do before we do it. There’s going to be no surprises. We talk about where we touch someone, we talk about what it’s going to look like.

[Our intimacy coordinator Olivia Troy] brought a friend in that was also an intimacy coordinator that was a plus-size woman, so she was able to tell me how them t*tt*es go when we doing this. And they really were just magic because everybody felt comfortable. It’s just really important for people to know what to expect so they can fully be in the scene and have fun, because I am not out here to make someone feel taken advantage of. You should feel empowered.

I’m not going to make you name any names of shows, but have there been experiences in the past that have informed your insistence on that?

Yeah. I’ve been part of projects and scenes where people are trying to make their day so they don’t go into some sort of meal penalty or overtime, and they forget that we are human beings trying to serve a story for you, but also, live our truth and dream. I’ve had friends, too, who have horror stories around doing intimate scenes. And I’m calling bullsh*t. I don’t give a sh*t about your meal penalty. Those avocados are still going to be there. There’s money for everybody. Take time to talk to someone, have a thoughtful director, an intimacy coordinator, and figure it out. Have a Zoom meeting before, some sort of kiki.

How do you decide what to share in your standup — or in your book, or through the show — about yourself, and what to keep private?

I think you know. You just know. And I think the more time that’s passed, then sometimes you could be like, “Oh, OK, I’ll release that in the wild.” My college boyfriend didn’t know how to read. He had a series of unfortunate circumstances in his life, and I didn’t know that, and I found out years in when I was already in love with him and I didn’t have the vocabulary to really talk about it or even understand. I think I shared that story onstage at a storytelling show about 15, 17 years later. My process is to process it, get to the other side, see what it is, and then rip it apart and talk about it.

For sure. That’s so much of writing rooms, even when it’s extremely fictional.

Yeah, it was my first writer’s room for my own show. It’s been a crazy year. I wrote my first episode of television for my own show, hosted the WGA [Awards] on the East Coast, and then months later I was on a picket line. So I got a full dose of what it’s like to be a writer.

I know there was some confusion at the beginning of the strike about promoting projects. Before everything got straightened out and it was made clear, what was your thought process, as you were going into releasing a show?

When things hit you like that, it’s sort of like COVID — you’re just learning things in real time. What can I do? What should I not do? And because I’m a multi-hyphenate and the show is already in the can, the best thing was to see this baby through, because it is an important show with important representation and stories.

On the one hand, I want a lot of people to see the show, because I think it would serve them. But also, it’d be great leverage to be like, “Look at what we did and we were almost broken, so we need more time to do it.” Forty-two shooting days, 16 weeks of writing. And the writers had to fly themselves out to set if they want to be a part of it. Which is so insane because if you’ve written an episode of something, there’s things that the director and the actors might not fully get — everybody that has created this should be there. And we should find it in the budget, because we even got avocados on set. We good. Come on. Kumquats — we don’t need kumquats. We need the writer, OK?

Ideally, both kumquats and writers.

Ideally both. Yes. I always felt like a kumquat sounds like a citrus queef. [Laughs.] And you can quote me on that, sister.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.