This is the first film or stand-up special I’ve wanted to review using GIFs of clips from the project itself. How exactly can one do justice to a comedian who is willing to prance-skip across the stage as she regales us with tales of Hinge dates with 65-year-old men and the bodily freedom that inspires? How can one do justice to her shape-shifting voice? Your imagination will have to do for now, but one has to see Steph Tolev’s brand of comedy to truly experience it.
Steph Tolev , Canadian-born L.A. based comedian, actor, and podcaster, is one of a kind. Her comedic blitzkrieg (one part physical, two parts raunchy poetry) has earned her rave reviews and support from comedy gods like Bill Burr and Bobby Lee, and from her generational comedic “classmates,” like Annie Lederman and Stavros Halkias .
After cutting her teeth for years across Canada with a home base in Toronto, Tolev packed up and moved to L.A. There, she doggedly pursued stand-up in the city’s most legendary clubs and started the podcast Steph Infection , where guests are invited to discuss a gross-out injury or ailment they’ve suffered in addition to chatting about their life and career.
Her career jumped to another level after Burr saw her and brought her into the fold as part of Netflix’s Bill Burr’s Friends Who Kill , a collection of short stand-up sets from promising up-and-comers. Her unique success following that appearance led to an equally small but memorable cameo in Burr’s movie, Old Dads , then a one episode walk-on role in Tires. She now finally gets her own full-length stand-up special.
Story after story, joke after joke, and squat after squat Filth Queen is all gas and no brakes. This might seem exhausting to a viewer, or to a comedian cut from a different cloth, like Mike Birbiglia or Marc Maron , but after years of putting in the hard work, Tolev is more than capable of making an hour feel like a mad 15 minutes.
Tolev is equally adept at inspiring a kind of honest laughter from women that I (a straight white guy, it must be said) haven’t heard since early Amy Schumer, although their approaches to comedy are very different. Tolev makes herself the butt of the joke (often a disgusting one) and never loses the audience’s respect. This is due to her conspiratorial demeanour. Most comedians who make fun of themselves do so by playing the insecure, anxious, or gross loser. Tolev admits to being all of those things, but paired with the outsized physicality she employs time and again in Filth Queen , the confidence it takes to reveal what she’s sharing and act the way she’s performing is unmistakable.
She describes a first date where she and a smaller-than-average-sized guy attend Ripley’s Aquarium. One of the exhibits is a big weight scale, where you can see how much you’d be worth if you were a tuna. She laughs in a girly way at her date when his price comes to $600. She steps on the scale: $2,000.
In the aforementioned bit about the 65-year-old man, she describes not having to worry about her body insecurities because the man can’t see. Sex with the lights on for once? Yes, please. Sucking in the gut? Not this time! She then learns he can’t even hear. Imagine what she does with the freedom.
Later, on a date with a farmer, she’s somewhat enticed by the fact that he’s got a sex swing back at his place. When she arrives, she finds out it’s still in the box. “Are we assembling an IKEA desk together? …We’re doing a full episode of Home Improvement right here. This is happening. I’m obviously Al.”
She not only makes the most of her rapt audience, she bookends the stand-up set with little “skits.” These don’t always work and sometimes need a beat to get to the punchline. Tolev’s proven herself on camera, so the chance to see her go for narrative real estate at least keeps one hanging on. Of course, she goes for winking, silly physical comedy, which peaks when she’s caught like a fish in a net by her real-life boyfriend Jefferson (nephew of Shooter McGavin aka actor Christopher McDonald) along the Boston shore.
Buy Tolev stock now, people. It’s about to go up.
P.S. Netflix: Put the special on the homepage, at least in her native Canada.
