If one glances through Jamie Lever’s Instagram, one will quickly note her incredible talent and skill as an artist. Her funny videos and celebrity spoofs earn her lots of praise from fans. However, Jamie, who is the daughter of veteran actor Johnny Lever, has faced many obstacles in the beginning due to the male-dominated nature of the stand-up industry.
Recalling the time when she entered the industry, Jamie told Hindustan Times, “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.”
In that moment, all Jamie was just searching for who is in the market and who are 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 added.
Jamie’s primary focus was self-improvement, and during her early days, she received assistance from her uncle Jimmy Moses and her father. She explained, “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.”
According to Jamie, female comedians often became the target of jokes by their male counterparts. She explained, “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.”
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