One have a look at actor-comedian Jamie Lever Instagram would make you realise her calibre and expertise as an artiste. Her hilarious movies, spoof movies mimicking numerous celebs usually get her praises from followers. But it hasn’t been a clean highway for Jamie, daughter of veteran actor Johnny Lever, as she admits going through a number of challenges initially in a male -dominated stand-up trade.
“When I entered the industry, I saw myself as an artiste and I never let the gender issue get to me so much. I was competing with some of the males out there, but I thought it doesn’t matter whether I am a male or a female, I just wanted to create space for myself as an artiste and that was my challenge,” she remembers.
In that second, all Jamie was simply trying to find was who’s out there and who’re the reigning comics. “I just had to do something to make a mark for myself and that was my motivation. I never thought that I want to become the next big female comic,” she provides.
Jamie’s focus was to work on herself, and her uncle (Jimmy Moses) and father helped her throughout the preliminary days. She says, “I started working on myself internally to make myself stand out. My father and my uncle played an instrumental role in prepping me in making me the artist I am today. Both mentored me and guided me on how to write and make jokes. I had singing, dancing, and acting, and even speech diction classes.”
It was throughout that strategy of prepping, when she realised that actor’s voices, accents and characters is one thing that she will be able to do and it appears good on her. “So, I started watching a lot of videos to catch the body language, speech, and tonality. The skills that I worked on in the beginning, helped me in carving a niche for myself,” she tells us.
The 35-year-old feels that the females have been often the punching baggage for jokes for male comedians. “We would never get the punch line, but we were the butt of the joke. The males would always throw the punch lines on us, instead of us delivering the jokes. I didn’t quite like that. It wasn’t just me, it was all the other females who were on the show. The general perception and the society’s mindset at that time (10 years ago) was that women aren’t funny, hence we weren’t given a lot of lines. But, after a couple of years, I gained a lot of confidence and started standing up for myself. I don’t blame anyone for not offering us much, but we had to prove ourselves.”
Jamie additionally talks about how she started her mimicking journey, and shares, “It all started when I got my first job at Comedy Circus. In that show, one of the things that was required by us as actors was impersonating celebrities. Doing accents and mimicking was one of the main requirements. Because of that, I started mimicking more people. I was able to mimic some actors, but never thought that I could make something of it.”
Source: www.hindustantimes.com