Taylor Tomlinson’s Prodigal Daughter: She Went Back to Church and Turned It into Stand‑Up
taylor tomlinson’s fourth Netflix special, Prodigal Daughter, filmed at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, premieres Feb. 24 and centers on her return to the church spaces where she began—this time using those walls as the stage for material about religious trauma and a life she has publicly left behind.
Taylor Tomlinson returns to the church stage
Shortly after her first Netflix special came out in 2020, Taylor Tomlinson began sketching an idea about what to do with material about God; that seed germinated over the past six years as she processed leaving the faith and the fallout of a conservative-Christian upbringing. The resulting hour, billed as her fourth Netflix special, was filmed last November in Grand Rapids and recorded at Fountain Street Church.
From Temecula church classes to selling out theaters
Tomlinson started doing stand-up in churches near her hometown of Temecula, California, at age 16 after taking a stand-up class with her dad; a woman at their church, a retired schoolteacher who did public speaking, encouraged them to sign up. She says she didn’t initially want to join because she had homework, and the interview transcript cuts off mid-sentence—unclear in the provided context. By 25 she had crossed into mainstream success, selling out top-notch venues and headlining larger theaters, and rights were acquired to make a scripted film about her life.
Religious trauma, Noah’s Ark and Job onstage
Her stage persona has embraced secular transgressions—Tomlinson has talked openly about sex and dropped more than one f-bomb, moves that the coverage notes went down famously well—and Prodigal Daughter lets her interrogate the costs of growing up inside abstinence culture. She worked through confusion that began when her mother died of cancer at age eight and adults in the church offered only pat answers, and she has discussed internalized guilt and shame as well as growing up secretly queer in the church; those concrete experiences feed jokes she once squirreled away until she felt ready to tell them.
How a profile and a review framed the special in Grand Rapids
Rolling Stone ran a profile that described her process: therapy and time allowed those ideas to ripen into a set that riffs on biblical tales such as Noah’s Ark and Job’s persecution, using those stories to highlight extremism for comic effect while stopping short of mere mockery. Rolling Stone quoted Tomlinson on Zoom from California—she was in a gray sweatshirt with a mussed blond bob—saying the special felt like “me in my final form” and that it ‘‘knows what it is and knows what it wants to say. ” The Rolling Stone piece also carried editor’s picks referencing The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far and The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time.
What the review called a come‑out swinging hour
A separate review in RIOTUS described Prodigal Daughter as Tomlinson ‘‘coming out swinging’’ in a one‑hour set that takes the audience to church for big life lessons and bigger laughs. That write-up highlights a string of topics in the special—mental health, HR training, coming out, toxic relationships and religious trauma—and says the Michigan audience both laughed and participated in her shenanigans. The review closes with an invitation to viewers: welcome the Prodigal Daughter onto your Netflix screens once again; Taylor Tomlinson is right at home here, and it includes a paywall note: Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
Where to watch and what’s next
Prodigal Daughter premieres Feb. 24 on Netflix; the special is the next confirmed public event tied to the material that began with her first Netflix special in 2020 and years of performing between church basements and sold‑out theaters. Further distribution details and the scripted film project tied to her life were noted in the coverage, and the special itself will be the immediate item audiences can watch on Netflix on its Feb. 24 premiere.
