‘Do what we’ve never done’: Michelle Buteau is aiming high for the final season of ‘Survival of the Thickest’

The comedian first brought Mavis Beaumont to screens in 2023 and after three seasons, plus a few awards, the show is set to conclude with its third season.

Michelle Buteau is preparing to say goodbye to her Netflix show, “Survival of the Thickest,” but not without resetting the bar for herself.

The NAACP Image Award winner and comedian took PEOPLE behind the scenes of the show’s final season and even revealed a few special guests, including Ice-T.

“We had a mission statement,” Buteau says of the show, which is wrapping after three seasons on the popular streaming platform. “We wanted to uplift people. We wanted this job to not be a parallel move for a lot of people. And we did that, which was amazing.”

Going into season 3, after Buteau’s Mavis character rekindles things with Luca (Marouane Zotti), fans are going to be treated to plenty of other big names showing up in Mavis’ world, including Wanda Sykes and D.L. Hughley, plus the return of Garcelle Beauvais. As creatives, Buteau and the rest of the show’s crew went in with the idea to simply give the show everything they had.

“Let’s blow it up and do stuff that we’ve never done,” Buteau said.

One of those things is her getting behind the camera. Ahead of directing her first episode of the show, Buteau told the outlet that it was one of the “highlights” of her life, especially considering she was directing her own show with a cast and crew who’ve become friends and family. Asked whether she was nervous to sit in the director’s chair, Buteau said there was no better place or moment to do it.

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“I thought, this is the safest space I’m ever going to do it in,” she said. “I was able to direct an episode and it was pretty fantastic. It is not often you can find a place and gather people together that make you feel like you’re at the tippy top of a rollercoaster, and you’re about to go fly and you feel safe. But somehow we were able to put all these people together who totally had my back and I have theirs. We created some really important television and the episode was very near and dear to my heart.”

Although ending the series wasn’t up to her, Buteau shared immense gratitude for Netflix allowing her a “safe space” to create something that was inclusive and eye-opening to people and that she could walk away from it knowing she was “f–king funny” and “really sexy.”

“I was so thankful for Netflix to say, ‘We really believe in this show. We’re going to do one more season, but this will be your final season.’ That’s such a gift that most creatives never, never get. You’re just sort of wandering and creating in this dark room of questions that are never answered,” she concluded.