Lilly Singh on South Asian representation in the West: We’re fighting to just have our skin colour on screen

LIlly Singh started her journeying as a contents creator-turned-comedian and tardily nighttime demonstrate host, and now she is making strides as an actor now too. She recently appeared in the American comedy show Deli Boys 2, and she feels excited about the opportunity. “My whole career, I've tried really hard to make stories like this come to life. And it's such an honour for me to step into a show that's already so incredible, so comedic, has such a great cast, and I get to be part of this amazingfamily. It's a dream show for me. I love the fact that all the characters are so messy and problematic, andwe don't get to see characters like that very often. I get to play a wife that's flirting with other men and disrespecting my husband, and it's so much fun; more of that please,” she quips. The show and her character mean a lot to Lilly Singh in terms of representation of the brown community in the West. “I'm sure in India there's different conversations around representation, but there's no hurdle about getting brown people on camera there. The struggle here is that we're fighting to just have our skin colour on screen. So when you get to have a show like this where not only are there South Asians on screen, but they get to have such a range of personality, that's really special because in the past, such characters have been either really smart, strict, straight edge, or they don't get to be messy, and that's such a shame. True representation for us, at least or for me, would be to see characters that get to make mistakes and get to swear a lot, be sexual and get to be an array of things as we've never ever gotten to see that. So, for us, it's a huge win,” she says. Reflecting on the brown representation she grew up watching, Lilly shares, “My only representation of specifically brown people was only Hindi cinema. In terms of North American cinema, I didn't really have anything. My closest things were Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Sister Sister and Family Matters which were predominantlyblack shows. We didn't have Never Have I Ever, or Deli Boys. So I always think how would my life be different if growing up I had shows where I actually saw myself. But I'm happy that people growing up now can see themselves on screen and it broadens what's possible for them.”Watch the full chat with Lilly Singh here: Sharing how people saw her as a representative of brown-coloured people in the West, Lilly shares a funny anecdote: “One of the most common comments I get under my Instagram is either, ‘You remind me a lot of Will Smith’, and that is because I learned comedy from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or the second one is ‘Your facial expressions remind me of Shah Rukh Khan’. It's because I was raised by those two people in either Hindi cinema or Western comedy. So now I look like two men when I do any type of comedy. How would my life have been different if someone like me was on screen?”