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Spencer Taylor \u201913<\/b><\/p>\n
In the Writers Room<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> By\u00a0Sara Ann Hutto \u201917<\/b> As a stand-up comedian and writer on the sitcom mixed-ish,<\/em> Taylor loves to make people laugh<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> The best way to get into stand-up comedy, according to Spencer Taylor, is just to do it.
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\n\u201cRemember that the worst thing that can happen is you get no laughs,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve had sets where I\u2019ve gotten no laughs. And you survive. And you learn. And you do better next time.\u201d
\nTaylor has been telling jokes on stage since she was 21 years old \u2014 after her mother gifted her with a series of stand-up classes for her birthday. She showed up, nervous, to the first class with a full five-minute set in hand, thinking she would have to perform that day. \u201cI had completely misunderstood,\u201d she remembers, \u201cand I realized no one else had a set. But I decided to do it anyway.\u201d
\nTaylor has taken that jump-in attitude and run with it.
\nOriginally thinking she wanted to become a doctor, Taylor majored in biological sciences at Clemson. Her main inspiration was her favorite show, Scrubs.<\/i> But it was during her junior year of college that Taylor realized she loved Scrubs<\/i> for a different reason: the comedy. She began incorporating jokes into her class projects and presentations, challenging herself to make them both funny and educational.
\n\u201cMy idea shifted from \u2018I want to be in medicine\u2019 to \u2018I want to be the person who created the television show that I love so much.\u2019\u201d
\nThat was when stand-up and comedy became the prime focus. Taylor started going to open mics and performing at comedy clubs, where she pushed herself to be creative and overcome her natural shyness. She says her comedy style is conversational absurdism, \u201cpointing out the weirdness of just the everyday.\u201d
\nAfter graduation, Taylor was scouted by an entertainment manager while she was performing stand-up at Laughing Skull Lounge, a comedy club in Atlanta with national acclaim. After sending out a slew of writing samples to \u201clike every late-night show you can think of,\u201d she was offered a writing job in Los Angeles for the show mixed-ish,<\/i> a prequel spinoff of the show black-ish,<\/i> starring Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson.
\nWith a Black mother and white father, Taylor brings a lot of her own experiences to the writers room. Despite revisiting \u201csometimes painful\u201d life experiences, Taylor says the reward has been the connections she\u2019s helped make: \u201cOne of my favorite things is getting on social media and scrolling through the comments and seeing thousands of mixed people say, \u2018Oh, I had this experience of not knowing what to do with my hair either,\u2019 or \u2018Oh my god, I felt that nervousness about where to sit in the lunchroom, too.\u2019 All of that has been really, really cool.\u201d
\nGiven the chance to flex her writing chops on mixed-ish,<\/i> Taylor hopes to get more writing and comedy opportunities under her belt. But walking into the writers room on the show is still surreal.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t believe that I do this for a living,\u201d she says. \u201cOne of my now closest friends and co-workers was a writer on Scrubs.<\/i> It\u2019s just been insane to make people laugh who have made me laugh growing up.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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As a stand-up comedian and writer on the sitcom mixed-ish, Spencer Taylor ’13 loves to make people laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":23703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[792,2720,2811,2813,2936,3108,3421],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","category-my-clemson","tag-comedy","tag-stand-up-comedy","tag-summer-2021","tag-summer-2021-alumni-profile","tag-television","tag-tv","tag-writers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/Spencer-Taylor.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23699"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}