Taylor Tomlinson Returns to a Grand Rapids Church for New Netflix Special Prodigal Daughter

taylor tomlinson’s fourth Netflix special, Prodigal Daughter, was filmed last November at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids and will premiere Feb. 24. The hour-long set finds her literally back in a church setting and matters now because it crystallizes six years of personal processing into a stage show that grapples with religious trauma amid mainstream secular success.

Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids

The special was staged at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where a live Michigan audience laughed and at times joined in the performance. Filmed last November, the hour-long comedy captures Tomlinson working through material that she spent years writing and holding until she felt ready to perform it on a broader platform: Netflix.

Taylor Tomlinson and Prodigal Daughter

Prodigal Daughter is being presented as Tomlinson’s fourth Netflix special. What makes this notable is that she chose a church as the backdrop not to mock Christianity wholesale but to confront and comicize her own religious upbringing. In interviews she framed the show as a culmination of personal work; she described feeling like her ‘‘final form’’ in a Zoom conversation from California in which she appeared in a gray sweatshirt and a mussed blond bob.

From Temecula churches to mainstream stages

Tomlinson first started doing comedy at 16 after taking a stand-up class with her dad that was recommended by a retired schoolteacher at her church. She began performing in churches near her hometown of Temecula, California, and by 25 had moved into mainstream success, selling out shows at top venues and headlining larger theaters. Shortly after her first Netflix special came out in 2020, she began working through what to do about God in her material, a process that stayed with her for years.

Six years of processing, therapy and material

For the past six years a seed of an idea germinated as Tomlinson processed the emotional fallout of a conservative-Christian upbringing and a parallel career forged in the Christian comedy circuit. She has been in therapy and working through issues that include confusion at age eight when her mother died of cancer and adults in the church offering only pat answers; internalized guilt from abstinence culture; and the experience of growing up secretly queer in church. That processing led to jokes she initially squirreled away until she felt ready to share them publicly.

Comedy content: Noah’s Ark, Job, mental health and more

The set journeys through toxic relationships, religious trauma and a breakdown of biblical stories — riffs on Noah’s Ark and Job’s persecution are used to underscore perceived extremism. Nothing is off limits: the hour covers mental health, coming out, HR training and other subjects, and it does so with the broad, participatory energy of a seasoned stand-up who can turn unhinged thoughts into snort-worthy tales. The performance leans on those colorful anecdotes to stitch together comedy and catharsis.

Secular success, candid language and a possible film

Tomlinson’s success has been decidedly secular; she has talked openly about sex and dropped more than one f-bomb on stage. That trajectory—moving from church basements to Netflix specials—has been accompanied by commercial markers: selling out shows and headlining larger venues. Rights have been acquired to make a scripted film about her life, an official step that extends her story beyond stand-up stages.

Dustin Nickerson, a fellow comedian and friend, discussed with her the idea of a return to church-themed material and even suggested calling it the Prodigal Daughter tour—an image that ultimately became the title of the new special. Because she spent years processing hard experiences, she was able to convert trauma into material that aims for both honesty and laughs; that causal line—therapy and time leading to creative readiness—is central to how the special was shaped.

Tomlinson’s return to religious subject matter, staged in a church and delivered on Netflix, marks a deliberate pivot: a performer who began in church-run classes and who was shaped by that environment now uses the same setting to examine and reframe what she learned there. Audiences will see a comedian who traces her arc from Temecula churches to mainstream visibility and who brings both confrontation and comic relief to long-held personal questions.