About seven years after she posted her first video on YouTube, Lilly Singh is Internet gold. In 2016, the 28-year-old ranked third on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest paid YouTube stars. The Canadian writes, directs, shoots, edits and stars in comedy videos that are released every Monday and Thursday. Over 11 million people who subscribe to the Superwoman channel gobble up every post. Among Lilly’s most popular videos are How Girls Get Ready and Sh*t Punjabi Mothers Say.
Lilly also posts a vlog (video blog) daily, talking about her day and her emotional status for her mega-fans who call themselves “Team Super”. Apart from this, Lilly is a motivational speaker, a rapper, has cameos in a few films, has a signature lipstick shade called “Bawse” with Smashbox and, now, is also an author.
WHO IS A ‘BAWSE’?
The 50 chapters of How To Be A Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life reflect Lilly’s beliefs regarding work ethics, empowering women, self love and saying it like it is.
FIRST THINGS FIRST — “WHO IS A BAWSE”?
“A boss is someone you have in your workplace who you take orders from. To be a ‘bawse’ means that you have conquered your whole life, both professionally and personally. A bawse strives to be the best version of themselves,” Lilly explains when I meet her at the ITC Grand Central Hotel in Mumbai.
In person, the Toronto-raised, LA-based YouTuber is nearly as animated as she is in her videos. Like her Internet persona, Lilly has the tendency to refer to herself in the third person. And, she talks really fast! Her three-city tour of India is part of a larger world tour to promote her book.
We meet a day after she has landed in Mumbai. On trend in denim-on-denim, she’s the centre of a controlled mini-whirlwind moving from interview to interview.
“Do you want me to tell them to shut up?” she jokes when the pitch-levels of her entourage suddenly gets higher than her own. Quickly she adds, “Naah… I could never shout at anyone.”
Sitting “ugly (with one leg tucked under her) ’coz this ain’t an on-camera interview,” Lilly got real about her famous friends, mental health and her ambitions.
WRITE & WRONG
Lilly didn’t want to write a book for the sake of writing one. “Before I wrote this book, I was approached a lot by publishers to write a book. I guess they knew my audience would buy it. I decided to only write when I was at a point where I was content; I had met a lot of cool people who I had learnt from; and, I had something to say.”
Writing the book gave Lilly a chance to reflect on her life and people she had met and extract lessons from them, she says.
While she’s been writing since her first YouTube video, the experience of writing a book was nothing like what she had expected.
“I had this whole image in my head of what the writing process would be like. It was all very romantic. I take three months off, sit by the fire and the book would pretty much write itself,” she laughs. Instead she found herself writing in bits and pieces between gigs and other commitments.
After years of writing sharply observed comedy skits for a channel, long-form prose came with its own set of challenges. “I normally don’t shy away from talking about things in my video. But what I did notice when I was writing was that I did get more vulnerable. It felt more raw, honest and hence more difficult to write. I guess it was because I wasn’t saying to anyone but writing it. I didn’t have to think about things like how long a video would be or where a punchline needs to be.
Also, I was used to people seeing what I have written twice a week while a book took a lot longer. There were days when I didn’t know if the book was going where I wanted it to go. Thankfully, it all worked out,” she says, flashing a big smile.
LOW-DOWN ON LILLY SINGH
Who’s that girl: Lilly Singh, a 28-year-old Canadian girl of Indian origin.
Aka: Superwoman, the YouTube sensation.
Find her at: Her YouTube channel where she posts videos about everyday life. On Twitter @IISuperwomanII, 2.3million followers; On Instagram @iisuperwomanii, 6.4million followers.
First video: 2010
Most popular video: How Girls Get Ready, with 22 million views
Team t2 recommends: How To Be A Good Wing Woman, featuring Priyanka Chopra as “Brianca”.
The book: How To Be A Bawse is Lilly Singh’s first book, published by Penguin Random House India, Rs 599 (paperback)
Bawse: A play on the word ‘boss’, rhymes with ‘mouse’. Bawse, says Lilly, is a way of life.
YOUTUBE BY CHANCE
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Lilly was working towards a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2010. She wanted to get a master’s and become a counsellor. Unexcited at the prospect, Lilly fell into depression. It was a chance discovery of YouTube that turned her life around. She started producing videos on her Macbook to present her online avatar Superwoman’s humorous take on life.
“Lilly and Superwoman are kind of the same, in the sense that they are both weird; they believe in the same things. In terms of values and qualities, they are the same people. But, Superwoman is a performer. When I am on stage, I am Superwoman. She is not shy or nervous; she just floats. Lilly runs the business. She is human and she gets tired sometimes.”
THE ONLY THING WORTH FIGHTING FOR
Lilly’s online success helped her bolster her own mental health. “When it comes to mental health, there is no universal right or wrong way to find a solution. I channelled my feelings through these videos on YouTube and self love, distraction and working towards a goal helped me overcome depression. That doesn’t mean that it would work for everyone. When it comes to mental health, I always say, ‘if you need help, seek help’. There is no shame in that. Find what works for you.”
Mental health is a subject that Lilly brings up often in her videos, her vlogs and her book. “I am a big believer that comedy is a great vehicle to talk about serious subjects, like mental health or women’s rights. Comedy is easier to digest.”
After years of struggling to be happy, the multi-hyphenate believes that happiness is the only thing worth fighting for. In her videos, Lilly refers to Unicorn Island — her happy place — and calls herself the “ultimate unicorn”. There is also a subgroup of Superwoman devotees who call themselves “The Lillycorns”.
She has a new perspective on what it means to be a unicorn. “Previously I thought I always had to be a unicorn. In recent years, through my journey, I have learnt that it is completely fine to be sad. Earlier, I used to be scared to be sad but now I embrace every emotion. If I need to be sad today, I’ll be sad.”
MICHELLE TO SRK
Over the years, she’s collaborated with the likes of Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, Selena Gomez and Malala Yousafzai.
“My life feels like a series of surreal moments.” There’s that time at an after-party for an awards show when Leonardo DiCaprio brushed past her. Or, when in a meeting she was told that Pharrell Williams was a fan of hers. In the book, Lilly writes about shooting for How My Mother Stole Christmas that features Seth Rogan and James Franco playing Santa and Elf.
“When I reflect on that story, I think ‘wow! I was dressed as my mom and kissing Seth Rogan’…. Yeah that’s a weird sentence. (There’s some talk of this story involving mood-enhancers but Lilly skips that.)
Asked to pick one “surreal” moment from her career, Lilly immediately talks about the first time she met Shah Rukh Khan.
“It was my first trip to Mumbai and I was performing on stage. I had just shot a video with Madhuri Dixit, and Shah Rukh Khan called me on my phone to invite me to his house! Before that he came to my show and on stage he did the Superwoman ‘S’ sign before leaving. I vividly remember wanting to throw up because I was so overwhelmed. I remember telling my friends that I was feeling something so intense that I don’t understand it.”
ROCK STEADY
Shah Rukh might have left Lilly overawed but there is only one man she is obsessed with — Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
“Recently a friend from Grade 5 reached out to me. In his message, he wrote about this one day that I remember vividly. We were sitting in my bedroom and talking what we wanted to do when we grew up. The only thing I said was, ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me but one day, I am going to know The Rock’. And, they were all like, ‘Ya, right!’ That friend’s message ended with, ‘Holy crap! You are actually friends with The Rock!’”
Since she first met Dwayne about two years ago, Lilly calls him a big influence in her life. “Before I got to know him, I believed that people like Dwayne could be nice but I didn’t know for sure. I wasn’t friends with anyone of the calibre of Dwayne. After meeting him, I saw the effort he puts into being humble and grounded and into giving back. To be honest, it gave me a lot of faith in humanity. It made me think that if someone as rich, famous and busy as him could still be a kind human being, that’s exactly what I want to be. When I started in this industry, everyone would tell me that when you become big, you’ll become a diva. Dwayne has proved that you don’t have to take that path.”
And with that — to quote the Bawse babe — like a turban, it was a wrap!
