Michelle Buteau was barely in her early twenties when a university professor told her she was too fat to be on camera.
It wasn’t the only time. An executive producer told her almost the same thing, suggesting that she write instead so others could act. Even stylists insisted that she dress in black to look slimmer. At 49, she now recalls those comments without resentment, but with a clarity that hits hard: “It’s not just about the industry, but about society, about culture”.
That same woman they told wasn’t fit for the screen is now the co-creator and star of Survival of the Thickest, the Netflix series in which she plays Mavis, a plus-size designer who decides to thrive, not merely survive. In the third and final season, Buteau will also make her directorial debut. Every scene she directs is, without saying so, the answer she was never given that day at university.
