The way I started doing comedy is not a very cool, rock and roll story,” Taylor Tomlinson says. At only 25, Tomlinson has already been doing stand-up comedy for almost a decade. From church basements to The Tonight Show to international tours, Tomlinson has come a long way and is ready for the next step. 

Tomlinson has performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Conan, MTV’s Safe Word, Comedy Central's Adam Devine's House Party, and Netflix’s The Comedy Lineup. In 2015, she was a top ten finalist on Season 9 of NBC's Last Comic Standing. She was named one of the Top 10 Comics to Watch at the prestigious Just for Laughs Festival by Variety Magazine. She also appears on the show What Just Happened??! with Fred Savage. 

When she was 16, her father wanted to take a stand-up comedy class with her to bond before she went to college. Because Tomlinson grew up in a religious household, that comedy class was taught by a Christian comedian who would perform at churches. Tomlinson showed potential in the class and her teacher had her open for him at shows for the next two years. By performing in churches and on other religious shows, Tomlinson successfully avoided a common issue for teenage comedians — not being old enough to enter the 21+ comedy clubs. “I wasn't going to get a fake ID; I was a good kid,” she says. 

As Tomlinson got older, she felt herself outgrowing church-based comedy. “If you're going to work in churches, you have to stay very clean and really careful for the rest of your career.” She continues, “Otherwise, you know, a swear word could end it for you. I wanted to talk about things in my comedy that would be too dark for church.” While Tomlinson slowly phased out doing shows for church audiences, she still is happy for the experience. Learning how to write clean comedy and getting stage time early in her career helped the fledgling comedian prepare for bigger things. 

At 17, Tomlinson went to college but didn’t have much time to perform. Not being able to perform made her realize how important comedy was to her. She recalls, “Another comic said to me ‘you're good and you're not going up [on stage] enough. If you went up as much as possible, you would get even better, even faster. Quite frankly, if you, if you don't make it as a comedian, it's not just anybody's fault but your own.’” After receiving that advice, she made the time to perform. At 20, Tomlinson was being booked to perform at colleges and was getting paid enough that she decided to quit her day job and quit school to focus on performing. While on the road performing at colleges, she was selected to be on Last Comic Standing.