From marketing to mimicry: Jamie Lever’s journey to becoming a comedy sensation and rejecting nepo-baby label

Dubai: There are comedians who make you laugh, and then there's Jamie Lever, who can make you laugh simply by becoming that nosy, judgmental Indian auntie.

You know the type. She asks intrusive questions, delivers unsolicited advice and disguises every barb as genuine concern. Worse, you're trapped with her in an apartment lift, with nowhere to run.

Lever, comedian, impressionist and daughter of Bollywood comedy legend Johny Lever, has turned these everyday characters into comedy gold. And judging by the reactions to her wildly popular Lift Auntie videos on social media, she has struck a nerve.

"Everybody is a victim. We're all victims here," Lever tells me, laughing, during our breakfast conversation for Dine with the Stars with Manjusha Radhakrishnan podcast series in Nonya in Taj JLT.

The best part? Even the aunties recognise themselves.

"I have the victims in my comment section, and the aunties also saying, 'This is me.'"

It's a delicious irony. The predators and their victims are now celebrating the same joke. Over a breakfast of croissants and coffee, we get talking about everything from her famous father and the dreaded nepotism debate to her refusal to use profanity as a shortcut to laughter.

Lever admits she has a sweet tooth, although she's trying to avoid sugar. Clearly, our breakfast isn't helping that resolution. But what becomes apparent during our conversation is that behind the impressions and exaggerated accents is a woman who has spent years trying to establish an identity beyond her surname.

And she has a rather cheeky ambition.

"When people see my dad, they should be like, 'Isn't that Jamie's dad?' That's what I'm working towards," she says.

For someone who grew up being identified as Johny Lever's daughter, it's a delicious reversal.

"All my life growing up, it's always been Johny Lever ki beti. And then I was like, no, I need to create my own identity, and I'm going to go after that."

From marketing calls to making people laugh

Interestingly, comedy wasn't the first career Lever pursued.

She did what many dutiful Indian children do. She studied, earned a master's degree in marketing communications, found herself a job and ticked all the boxes her parents had laid out.

Her professional life involved marketing, sales, cold calls and emails. Hardly the stuff of comedy legend.

"Everything my parents asked me to do. Very obedient child," she says.

But something wasn't adding up.

"After I've done it all, if I'm still not happy, if I'm still feeling unsettled, then something's off, right?"

She realised she was looking at the world differently. While others went about their lives, Lever was observing their peculiarities, their awkward moments and their attempts to cover up embarrassing situations.

She was even making notes.

"I feel like I'm an entertainer deep down inside. I love making people laugh."

Her father wasn't particularly surprised when she announced her ambitions. After all, she had already won competitions in stand-up comedy, acting, dancing and singing during her university years.

The turning point came when she performed at one of Johny Lever's shows in London.

"I got a standing ovation the first time I had been on stage. So that was like a green signal for us."

But her father had concerns.

"He didn't know as a girl if I would survive this. He didn't know as a woman if it would be easy for me."

Twelve years into her career, she believes she has finally found her footing.

And her father is beginning to enjoy a different kind of compliment.

People now approach him to praise his daughter.

"He loves hearing from people," she says, revealing that he doesn't necessarily sit down and watch all her videos himself.

She recalls how actor Suniel Shetty apparently contacted her father after seeing her Lift Auntie act. Her father promptly called to ask what she had done to generate such praise.

'No phone calls were made'

Being his daughter comes with obvious advantages, but Jamie is keen to challenge the assumption that her father picked up the phone to secure her career.

When I ask whether he made calls to filmmakers to get her work, her answer is immediate.

"Actually, no." Her first television opportunity came through an audition for a comedy show.

She remembers recording a 12-minute audition featuring accents, mimicry and whatever else she thought was funny.

That evening, she received a call offering her the entire season.

Her first film opportunity came through filmmakers Abbas-Mustan, who had known her since childhood through their association with her father.

But Lever insists the offer followed her work on television and a video of her impressions that had circulated widely on WhatsApp.

The film's writer had seen her on Comedy Circus and written a character with her in mind.

"My dad was equally surprised," she recalls.

"I think work got me more work. That's how it happened. No phone calls were made."

Of course, the nepotism label still follows her.

"That 'nepotism' word is thrown at me also very casually sometimes. People on social media will be like, 'Nepotism.'"

She doesn't pretend that having a famous surname makes her circumstances identical to those of an outsider. But she points out that the comparisons can be relentless.

"Even if my dad made calls, it would be so tough for me because how am I going to match him? And you're going to constantly be judging me, constantly be criticising."

It's a complicated argument in an industry where access and opportunity are rarely distributed equally.

Lever is also sympathetic towards other actors born into film families, including Janhvi Kapoor, who face enormous scrutiny.

Her point is that a famous parent doesn't automatically guarantee an easy or enduring career.

Why Jamie Lever won't swear for laughs

There's another thing that sets Lever apart in the increasingly crowded comedy circuit.

She doesn't rely on profanity or sexually explicit jokes to get a laugh.

And when I ask whether maintaining that family-friendly image is difficult, she doesn't hesitate.

"It's not difficult for me," she says.

"In my personal life, I'm not somebody who swears a lot anyway."

I jokingly invite her to spend a week in our newsroom. That might change things.

But Lever is serious about the kind of comedy she wants to create.

Her father's work, she explains, has traditionally appealed to families, and she is conscious that some of his loyal audience has followed her career.

"In my shows, I have 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds, and they want to come and watch because they have been Johny Lever fans."

She doesn't want to alienate them by suddenly adopting a style that doesn't come naturally to her.

"I have never been tempted to make all these R-rated jokes."

Her conviction was tested early in her career when she performed a short set at a Mumbai comedy club.

Other comedians were using profanity and adult humour, and audiences were responding enthusiastically.

A manager suggested she loosen up and abandon her clean-comedy approach.

But Lever wasn't convinced.

"I said, but it doesn't come naturally to me. Then why will I do it?"

That experience helped her identify her audience.

"My audience is the family audience. I want eight-year-olds to come with their dada dadi."

Her father also impressed upon her the responsibility that comes with holding a microphone.

"He told me, be careful because as a comedian, you have to be responsible. That you say the right thing, you protect the culture, you protect the women."

She doesn't dismiss comedians who work with more adult material. She acknowledges that they have their own audiences and are doing well.

But she's happy sticking to her strengths.

"I am happy with my impersonations. I do a lot of characters on stage."

And there are plenty more characters where those came from.

'Mimicry is a very difficult art form'

If there's one thing Lever would like people to stop doing, it's dismissing mimicry as an easy route to cheap laughs.

Her impressions of singer Asha Bhosle and filmmaker Farah Khan have earned her considerable attention, but she argues that getting them right requires far more than putting on a funny voice.

"Mimicry is a very difficult art form. You need a lot of skill for it. It's not easy."

She explains that an impression involves studying voice modulation, body language, facial expressions and mannerisms.

"There's a lot of study that goes into it. I'm sitting and observing, watching videos, practising the voice."

She has also received encouragement from some of the very celebrities she impersonates.

Farah Khan, in particular, has been supportive.

"She loves it. I think she was the first one to call me," Lever recalls.

The filmmaker even encouraged her to continue.

"She really supports me. And she encourages it."

Lever says several industry personalities, including Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Sonu Nigam and Rekha, have reached out to appreciate her work. She also recalls speaking to the late Lata Mangeshkar.

For her, these responses challenge the suggestion that mimicry is inherently disrespectful.

"It is the highest form of flattery," she says.

More than the funny girl

While her comic characters have made her popular, Lever doesn't want to spend her entire career making funny faces and delivering punchlines.

She wants to act.

And not necessarily in comedies.

She points to her role in the crime series Matka King, where she plays a serious character far removed from her familiar comic persona.

"She is pretty much crying the entire time," Lever says of the character.

It was a deliberate attempt to escape the expectations attached to her public image.

"I don't like being stereotyped or put in a box that this is all she can do. But I really want to try different things."

She is particularly drawn to character actors who can leave a lasting impression even without dominating screen time.

Growing up, she admired performers such as Johny Lever, Kader Khan and Rajpal Yadav for their ability to walk into a scene and steal it.

"They create magic," she says.

Her own ambition is refreshingly straightforward.

"When I come on screen, I just want to go explode, boom, and leave. And people should be like, what was that?"

It's not about the length of the role, she agrees. It's about the impact.

The woman who can command a stage but feels shy in a room

For someone who can effortlessly transform into a loud, opinionated auntie or a larger-than-life Bollywood personality, Lever has a surprisingly reserved side.

She describes herself as an ambivert.

Put her in a room full of strangers and she may retreat into her shell.

"I'll feel very shy. So I come across as somebody who has a lot of pride, but I'm just shy. I don't know if I fit in."

But put her on stage and the transformation is instant.

"I will explode. I'll just be like a lioness."

That confidence doesn't mean she's immune to nerves.

Even after performing the same jokes dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times, she worries about whether the next audience will laugh.

"I am still nervous because each audience is different, and it can go really well. It can go down south for you."

Her response to a joke falling flat is to fight harder.

"I will get the laughs out of you. If my one joke flops, I'm moving on to the next. I put double the amount of energy in my delivery."

She remembers one particularly unresponsive man sitting in the front row who barely reacted throughout her performance.

After the show, he approached her to say how much he had enjoyed himself.

I suggest that people like him should come with subtitles on their faces.

Lever laughs, but it's a genuine occupational hazard for a comedian. Sometimes the audience is enjoying itself. It just forgets to inform the person working desperately to entertain it.

Dubai, thankfully, is a different story.

"I love the Dubai audiences. I've been here so many times. I've performed here with my father and on my own."

She describes the crowds as warm, enthusiastic and willing to laugh, with some fans returning to watch the same set more than once.

"That's why I keep coming."

Making her father proud

Towards the end of our conversation, Lever returns to the one person whose approval has always mattered deeply to her.

Her father.

Despite all the fame and affection Johny Lever has received over the years, she remembers him as a parent who wanted to know whether his own children were proud of him.

"When I was young, he and I used to watch his movies at home. We used to put on the TV. He's on every other channel, right?"

He would watch their reactions and ask a simple question.

"Beta, you proud of me?"

For Jamie, the ambition was always to hear those words in reverse.

"Growing up, all I wanted was my dad to be like, 'Beta, I'm proud of you.'"

It's perhaps the most revealing moment of our breakfast.

Behind the exaggerated accents, the celebrity impressions and the wonderfully irritating Lift Auntie is a daughter who wanted to make her father proud without relying on his name to get there.

And while Johny Lever remains one of Hindi cinema's most beloved comedians, his daughter is building a comic identity that is unmistakably her own.

As we finish breakfast, there's one thing I can safely say. Jamie Lever may be trying to cut down on sugar, but she's certainly not rationing the laughs.