There’s no denying that Dulcé Sloan can make you laugh. Between her appearances as a correspondent on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah and her punchy stand-up routines—which include jokes about the joys of sleeping with White men, refreshingly non-self-deprecating fat girl humor, and jests on how living in New York makes it hard to murder someone—she has solidified herself as a force in the comedy game.
But if you haven’t been paying close enough attention, then you might have missed that she’s also becoming quite a beauty junkie. It’s a fact that even she herself is still discovering.
“I don’t have the time or dedication to put on makeup every day,” she says. “I’m not that person; that’s not my ministry. I’ll be late and have on just one eyelash. I wake up right before I need to be at work.”
Though she’s quick to reaffirm that the daily slay is “not a god that I pray to,” you’d have a hard time identifying an occasion when you saw Sloan without makeup. Focused on perfecting her look for performances, she has found her stride when it comes to getting glammed up.
“On big shows I always wear makeup, mainly because I am a theater kid,” she says. “When I first started doing stand-up or I was performing, even for smaller open mics and book shows, I would put makeup on because to me it was like, Okay, I’m doing a show. Put makeup on. That’s what you do.”
This season she has expanded that theater kid makeup mantra to include styles for the vamp vixen, and is unleashing the fierce queen within. Switching up from her signature Afro, she’s exploring fresh options like goddess twists and pairing them with a bright pout. A self-proclaimed lover of lashes and of color blocking her eye shadow vertically to make her hooded lids pop, she has found the most difficulty—and the most pleasure—in the art of accentuating her “little” lips.
“I’m always saying to people, ‘My lips are so little,’ and they’re like, ‘You need to shut up,’ ” she says jokingly. “It’s starting to get cold now, and when it’s cold outside my lips get dry and just retreat into my face. They’re just like, ‘We’re not supportive. We’re not helping you.’ So now I got this lip serum from Fresh. I thought it was a con job, but every night I’ve been using it and I have really not had those issues anymore. I mean, I’m never going to be Kerry Washington, but that’s not the dream.”
Even so, she’s been able to experiment with lavender, reds, pinks, deep purples and all the other vivid trendy colors she likes to put on her kisser. And after learning how to overdraw her liner just the right amount to make her lips appear bigger, she’s psyched about all the hues out there still to sample.
That’s not the only thing keeping the comic busy. Her half hour Comedy Central Presents stand-up special premiered on the cable channel on October 25, and she has been added to the cast of the animated Fox series The Great North, which is set to debut in 2020.
Looks like we can expect to see Sloan and her newly dolled up and hydrated lips a lot more in the coming months.