She is on People magazine’s ‘Ones to Watch’ list. She is plastered all over America on billboards in her many avatars – including a character in a head scarf she has created on her YouTube channel called IISuperwomanII. She’s the one watching over everything.
Lilly Singh represents the South Asian girl in the US whose time has come. She wears many hats besides the Youtube one – she is also a rapper, an actor, comedian, video-blogger and a motivational speaker.
How does she have the time to do so much? She’s planned it well in advance. Singh was all of eight when she heard a song about a superwoman and decided that’s what she wanted to be when she grew up.
In 2010, when she launched her own YouTube channel under the name IISuperwomanII, she played every woman – creating funny caricature videos of how her mother and grandmother and several other Indian characters react to pop culture references and topics never openly discussed in Indian households.
On her universal appeal, she said, 'The parent characters that I portray are Indian because I grew up in an Indian household. Having said that I feel like people of all cultures would relate to those parents.'
Her videos on Indian parents explaining how babies are born and types of cousins are hitting home runs. However, she has a huge fanbase in India. The Canada-based Singh realised her popularity only when she got to Mumbai.
Singh says, ‘I had well passed a million subscribers, which was cool, but I still didn’t feel like "oh no, I made it." I think it was the first time I performed in India. It was YouTubeFanFest in Mumbai. First time in Mumbai, first time going to India as Superwoman – and I remember standing on the stage and it was just crazy. The ovation was crazy. Shahrukh Khan invited me to his house and I was like, this is too surreal, and it was just such an awakening. I thought, wow, this is definitely something. To literally go across the world to a place where you didn’t think anyone would know you, and for all of them to be chanting your name? It was a really big awakening. So that moment on stage, I was like, wow this is something.’
Then there was the time she lucked out with Madhuri Dixit. Singh had her own fan-girl moment when she got to do the Dhak dhak routine with the supestar.
Or the time she settled for Seth Rogen’s cherubic cheeks when she could have had James Franco under the mistletoe.
When Kunal Nayyar and Lilly Singh recreated how her parents fell in love, it was a full-fest action romance better than Twilight.
She went on a date with singer Jay Sean.
Ironically, her most watched videos are those where she is explaining life-altering scenarios such as What YouTube Comments Really Mean. That’s what made her special.