YouTube stars didn’t exist ten years ago (the company only launched in 2005), but man: what a difference a decade makes.
These 21st century sensations occupy their own tricked-out wing of the celebrity sphere – and in many cases, they’re not actually using their homemade YouTube videos to break through to the film, television, or music industries.
Instead, many top YouTubers are perfectly happy where they are: scoring millions of views and enjoying the fruits of their uploads, including endorsement deals, ad revenue, and passionate fan followings.
To see the power and allure of the YouTube star in action, you didn’t have to look much farther than Granville Street one balmy night in July, when YouTube sensation Lilly “Superwoman” Singh brought her live stage show to the Vogue Theatre.
Three years ago, Singh was a 20-something university grad making comedy and motivational videos in her Toronto-area bedroom.
Today, Singh’s Superwoman YouTube channel boasts more than 6 million subscribers and nearly 800 million views– and you can bet the thousand or so screaming teen girls (and some bewildered moms and dads) who flooded into the Vogue to see Singh dance to pop hits, act (as caricatures of her parents, who appear in some of her most popular videos), and speak about self-esteem, happiness, and conquering depression have streamed every single one.
Some things haven’t changed since those early days – she's still recording videos in her bedroom – but now Singh collaborates with power players like The Rock, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Kunal Nayyar (The Big Bang Theory), and more.
Next up for Singh is a documentary about her A Trip to Unicorn Island World Tour, which took her and 8 dancers to 30 cities across the globe. Check out the trailer here.
Singh sat down with Reel People in the Vogue’s green room moments after her Vancouver show.
Q: You’ve literally just stepped off of the stage. How do you feel right now?
LILLY: I feel sweaty. I feel awesome. I feel like the crowd had great energy, and there’s huge adrenaline that will last ten more minutes before I pass out.
Q: Before you set out on this journey, did you know who your audience would be?
LILLY: Kind of. Naturally I knew, my skin is brown, there’s going to be a lot of South Asian people watching the videos, and I did know it would be mostly girls. A lot of my topics are about periods and relationships, so I get that. My demographic is mostly 14-25 female. Having said that, from the beginning of this tour to now, I’ve noticed that the audience has become so diverse in age and race and everything. At my meet and greets, there are parents who want to meet me, and there are people from all walks of life, so it’s becoming really diverse.
Q: Was it a challenge sitting down and deciding what your show was going to look like, when you’re not too sure who’s going to be sitting in the audience?
LILLY: Yes, for sure. This is my first show where it’s just me. I’ve performed live where I’ve done comedy nights and hosted events, but this is the first time where, from beginning to end, it’s my message. So putting the show together was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was so critical. I did draft and draft after draft. What I decided was, the whole message of the show is happiness, so what I thought was, that doesn’t have age restrictions, and everyone can relate to that. So that’s why that is the underlying message. Yes, there are some Indian jokes, there are some white people jokes, but the underlying message is something I think everyone can relate to: having hard times, finding your happy place, believing in yourself.
Q: You speak in the show about how you battled depression only a few years ago, around the same time that you started posting videos. What’s the connection between you depression battle and the very beginnings of your YouTube career?
LILLY: One of the ways that I truly got out of depression was deciding to post videos. I had a few out at that time, but when I truly decided that I wanted to do two videos a week and make this my career, the reasoning was, 'There are many out of people out there who feel this way, and if my videos can switch to help other people, that’s what I want.' People always ask me, ‘How did you get out of depression?’ And I never have an answer. My answer is, ‘I don’t know, something just switched.’ And so I always refer to the switch that I hope my video can be in someone’s day. Even a video that’s not related to happiness – it can be like, ‘my parents do such and such’ – but just that smirk, and making someone laugh, that can be a switch for someone.
Q: Do you still feel depression? Is that someone that you worry about, or that you address in your videos at all?
LILLY: Definitely. On my vlogging channel, which is way less scripted and way more raw, people will see that, even on this tour, I’ve had days of relapse. Exhaustion will do that, but also, this can be super lonely. It’s a very protected world. I can’t go outside without security. This is a very lonely job. So, of course, definitely, sometimes it does throw me back into this place, and it’s happened before shows. This is my 27th show, and there have been some shows where I’m like, ‘Oh man, I do not feel like doing this,’ but it’s all about controlling that mind.
Q: How have you changed over this tour?
LILLY: Immensely. That’s a great question. I think the number one thing that has changed about me is that I have learned – or, at least, I hope I’ve learned – how to be a little bit of a boss. This is a job I haven’t trained for, and all of these people, whether it’s the dancers or the tour manager, the stage manager, the production company, they’re all looking to me for answers, and I went to school for psychology. I was never trained how to act on a stage, have stage presence, how to deal with people, work with people. So at the beginning of this tour, I used to be overly polite and nice, where I was like, ‘oh, that’s okay, don’t worry about it.’ I’m not going to lie: throughout this tour I’ve learned that, no, you have to put your foot down sometimes, especially if it’s to protect something you’re so passionate about.
Q: I would be remiss to not mention your parents at all. When I watched the videos, I kept forgetting that it was actually you pretending to be them. What do your parents think of all of this?
LILLY: When I first started, they never said no to me. They never said, ‘You can not do this.’ They didn’t really understand what it was. So I think, to them, they thought, ‘Oh, this is a phase, she’s going to get through this, and she’s going to do her Masters like a good girl should.’ They gave me the best advice ever when I first told them I wanted to do this. They said, ‘If you want to do it, do it the best.’
I was applying for my Masters at the time, and even doing my applications, I hated it. I didn’t want to do it. So I walked into my parents’ room and I said, ‘I want to not do my Masters, and try doing YouTube full time.’ They said, ‘If you’re going to do that, do it the best.’ They gave me a year, and I did the best I could in a year, and it went somewhere that year. Now, they fully understand. They travelled with me to India and New Zealand. They see what I see, and they fully get it now, and it’s been quite the journey to teach them that this is a real thing. To be fair, even some of my friends don’t get it. ‘YouTube? You do videos?’ It’s a new thing. It’s been a learning process.
Q: What about how you portray your parents in your videos? Is this them?
LILLY: To be fair, not really. They say a lot of the same things, but the way I made the characters, they’re very over the top exaggerations of everyone’s parents. That’s why everyone, whether you’re Indian or not, gets it. My parents don’t dress like that. They don’t speak like that. They don’t have accents. They’re not exactly like that. I’m just exaggerating everyone’s parents.
Q: What haven’t you done yet that you’d still like to attempt?
LILLY: I would love to get more into TV and film. I’ve only had small roles in a few things. I’d love to be in a movie, be in a TV show. That world really excites me, not because I think traditional media is better or more important than what I’m doing, because I really feel like the playing fields have leveled out a little bit, but it’s the challenge associated with it that are different that I really feel will help me grow in an entirely new way.
Q: If you could go back in time and give some advice to yourself starting out in this journey, what advice would you give?
LILLY: It would be, ‘Start earlier.’
Q: Would you still go to school?
LILLY: That’s another great question. I feel like my parents would not give me a choice, but I will say that, if I truthfully answer that though, I feel like everything that’s happened leading up to Superwoman has been perfect. I have no regrets. I went through depression for a year. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Because of that, I became Superwoman, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
Q: And you met The Rock.
LILLY: I mean, hey. [Laughter]. If anyone asked me the number one thing on my bucket list, it was meeting him. I did it. I met him. It was the best day of my life, and I thought, ‘Oh, this was a one-off thing, it’s never going to happen again.’ In Boston, his daughter came to my show, his girlfriend came to my show. They all hung out with me. The next day, he invited me to his set. We had a heart to heart for 30 minutes. We’re friends now, and it’s just the most surreal thing of my life.
Q: Do you have mentors at all? You mentioned loneliness. Are there people that you can talk to, to talk about your ideas and everything you’re going through?
LILLY: There are, and they’re not the people you’d expect them to be. That’s one of the hardest things about the job. I have my friends with me on tour, and I have my family, and I have all of this stuff, but in terms of what I’m going through, it’s impossible for them to understand it, because they are not experiencing it. I had this conversation with Kunal Nayyar, who plays Raj on The Big Bang Theory, he’s a good friend of mine, and he said something just last week that really resonated with me. He said, ‘You can not expect people who are not going through what you’re going through to understand. They will not. People like me will understand.’ So when it comes to getting advice on legal stuff or emotional things I need to go through, I’ll message him, or I’ll message Duane The Rock Johnson, because they can truthfully answer.
Q: You don’t call him The Rock?
LILLY: I try not to call him The Rock. I try to call him DJ, actually, because that’s what he calls himself when he messages.
