When Bill Burr reposted one of Steph Tolev’s comedic Instagram videos and then reached out over direct messages asking that she open for him on his upcoming tour, she thought it was a scam.
“He gave me his phone number, and I thought it was a fake account,” the Toronto comedian says. But then she got the call from her agent — it was real, and he wanted her to open for him at his Toronto stop of his tour at the Scotiabank Arena.
“It was good, but it was weird; you can’t hear laughs properly from the audience, so I was like, ‘Am I bombing or am I killing?’” Tolev recalls. “But Bill was laughing, so that felt good.”
Soon after, the Breaking Bad actor asked to feature her in his Netflix special, Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill.
And now it’s all coming full circle: Tolev recently filmed her own first standup special, set to premiere on a yet-to-be-announced large streaming service in early 2025, and says Burr is going to be featured in the opening with her.
Tolev’s success is made even sweeter by the fact that, starting out as a standup comic in Toronto, she butted up against bookers who refused to let her into their clubs. “In Canada, there’s like five of them, they’re gatekeepers, and they never have women headliners,” she says.
FAST FACTS
Name: Steph Tolev
Graduated: East York Collegiate
Fave memory in the city: Pool hopping in the summer as a kid
Fave bar in the city: Ted’s Collision and Body Repair
Fave local comedian: Debra DiGiovanni
Toronto’s alternative clubs were much more supportive: “Gary Rideout, who runs Comedy Bar, was one of the first ones to give me my chance. You could really hone your craft there without judgement,” Tolev explains.
But, struggling to break into the mainstream clubs, she eventually made the move to L.A. “It was tough; you have to apply for a green card, spend a bunch of money, do a bunch of commercial work,” she says. “But you hit a ceiling here [in Canada], and you eventually have to leave if you want to really make it. That’s probably why I find Canadian comedians so much funnier — I think we have to work a lot harder for it.”
Now, Tolev is one of the only Canadians to be passed (a comedy term for becoming a paid regular) at the Comedy Store in L.A., one of the biggest and most renowned in the city with a laundry list of notable alumni that includes Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy.
“That feels pretty good when I think about those two big Canadian bookers who told me no,” she says.
With a loyal following of over 700,000 on TikTok and almost 300,000 on Instagram, Tolev clearly is killing — and her fans are the kind that actually show up for her shows and tours.
“It’s funny because some people will show up to my shows in jumpsuits,” referring to what has accidentally, she says, become her signature look of colourful coveralls.
Tolev will be back in Toronto in March, for a reunion sketch show with her longtime friend and other half of sketch comedy duo Ladystache, Allison Hogg. She also has a role in an upcoming Netflix series, stepping back into her acting shoes after playing herself on season three of Hacks.
You can also hear Tolev chat with fellow comedians on her podcast, Steph Infection. The theme is very on-brand for Tolev’s sense of humour: it covers any and all things related to the body, the weirder the better. “I always have strange symptoms and health stuff, so I thought why not make it about that?” she says. “And everyone has a weird body story, and it’s great because comics come on and they don’t tell the same stories they’re telling in every other interview.”
Her transparency has also become something her fans have come to expect at her shows. “My comedy is often self-deprecating, raunchy, honest and goofy. I’ve talked about my hemorrhoids a lot recently, and then after the show, the entire meet and greet line was women and people telling me about their hemorrhoids,” Tolev recalls. “And afterwards, I got a bunch of DMs from people thanking me for talking about mine and telling me about theirs!”
