A couple weeks have passed since I bid the folks at Mythical adieu, and I’m sitting in a living room in Austin, Texas, watching Oppenheimer clean up at the 2024 Oscars.
A friend of mine—a creator and photographer—is hosting the watch party at his parents’ house, who kindly cooked us a delicious Vietnamese dinner. In between mouthfuls of egg rolls and rice bowls, the dozen or so of us there debate whether Past Lives should’ve won Best Original Screenplay (it should’ve) or if Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance was a little too over-the-top (it wasn’t).
Most of us are full-time creators, writers, or entrepreneurs. I’d wager the median age is 24. Pretty much all of us work in — or tangential to — social media, in some way, shape, or form.
Isn’t this the exact demographic that supposedly doesn’t watch movies, or care about the Oscars anymore?
The second leg of my journey has plucked me out of Los Angeles for a temporary pit stop in the Lone Star State. Each year, Hollywood makes the pilgrimage here in early March with the hopes of discovering the next big thing. For indie films beginning their rollout, a buzzy premiere at Austin’s South by Southwest can generate hype among critics and fans alike, such as the legendary Everything Everywhere All at Once run in 2022.
On Tuesday evening, ninety-degree highs haven’t kept the crowds from congregating outside the Paramount Theater. Many are here to sneak a glimpse at Gosling, who arrives around 6 p.m. for the world premiere of his latest movie, The Fall Guy.
But I’m not here for Ken. I snake my way through the hundreds gathered on Congress Avenue and slip into the smaller Stateside Theater to see Lilly Singh’s feature film debut, a raunchy comedy called Doin’ It.
Inside, the energy is a little more reserved, though the excitement is palpable as the theater starts to fill up. Two folks seated behind me — a man in his early forties, and a woman in her late thirties — flew in from Brooklyn. The woman is here to support her good friend (and Doin’ It cast member) Stephanie Beatriz, an actor known for her starring role on long-running sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The man is a producer who tells me that “a lot of people in comedy” were “eagerly waiting” to hear about the film.
Doin' It, Unicorn Island Productions (2024)
Doin' It is the first feature film from Lilly Singh's company. Singh also stars and is credited as a co-writer.
A retired local teacher in his sixties sits down to my left shortly before the opening credits. He’s never heard of Lilly before, but he likes “movies about high school” and convinced his wife it could make for a fun date night.
Our conversation is interrupted by applause as Lilly strides to the front of the theater. Rocking a bright pink trench coat and matching pants, she immediately grabs the room’s attention—similar to her panel earlier in the day, which I’d attended at the convention center.
“I’ll be happy and glad if we break even,” Lilly had said then. If Doin’ It could open the door for more movies “told through a South Asian lens,” she explained, that counted as a win in her book.
What stuck out most, however, was Lilly’s description of the “double-edged sword” of her path here. Lilly launched her YouTube channel in 2010, uploading sketch comedy videos and parody songs — many of which poked fun at her life experiences growing up in Toronto as the daughter of Indian Punjabi immigrants. As her audience grew to over fourteen million subscribers, so did the notoriety of her collaborators; two of her most popular videos feature Dwyane “The Rock” Johnson and a young Zendaya.
Nevertheless, the goal was always to cross over, to use her channel as a launchpad into acting. “People get very comfortable being like, ‘This is your box,’” Lilly said on the panel. “I have nothing against the digital space—it gave me my career—but I think as a creative, you want to grow.”
This desire for growth amounted to a move to Los Angeles in 2015, when her career really took off. Continuing to upload videos on YouTube, Lilly developed inroads within the entertainment industry by presenting herself as a multi-hyphenate . She toured, published two books, and even voice acted in everything from Ice Age to The Simpsons.
Her most high-profile endeavor, though, was A Little Late with Lilly Singh. The NBC series, which aired after Late Night with Seth Meyers, signaled a major moment in Hollywood. Not only had Singh succeeded in truly crossing over, she was also the first person of Indian and South Asian descent—as well as openly bisexual—to host a late-night talk show on a major American network.
Lilly Singh speaks about Doin' It at a SXSW panel. “I’ll be happy and glad if we break even…[so] that the next time there’s a story that’s told through a South Asian lens, people are less hesitant, that a buyer is less hesitant,” Singh says. / Photography by SXSW
Critics praised her “brashness, energy, and wit” along with her “engaged” interviews with celebrity guests from Mindy Kaling to John Cena. Viewers disagreed and felt her comedy played better on YouTube. The ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that only 15% of audience reviews were “generally favorable.”
A Little Late ran for two seasons, airing its finale in June 2021. Regardless of how her fans might remember the show, Lilly believes it raised her profile and led to more acting roles . “It very much so validated me and gave me that necessary step,” Lilly said on The Colin and Samir Show that December. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Which brings me back to tonight, and the Doin’ It premiere in Austin. The film follows a thirty-year-old virgin, played by Lilly, who takes a temporary job as a sex-ed teacher when funding for the social media app she’s building falls through. It’s a fun time—genuine laugh-out-loud moments are sprinkled in between worthwhile commentary on the taboo of sex, and high school educators’ struggles to teach the birds and the bees.
After the credits roll, Lilly appears back on stage, beaming in front of the buzzing audience. She talks about her and her co-writers’ goal to pay homage to classic high school movies that inspired them, and she describes the “unhinged process” of producing a sex comedy (“My search history is hot trash,” she jokes).
To wrap up the event, Lilly pulls a stunt that I imagine may be the first of its kind for a film premiere. “By show of hands here, if you related to any part of the shame and sexual journeys in this movie, raise your hand right now!” she shouts, as her team starts handing out “luxury sex toys” to a fresh wave of applause.
I politely decline one when offered. The retired teacher sitting to my left, however, cheerfully accepts a vibrator and hands it to his wife.
Lilly Singh (center) celebrates with talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon (left) and Seth Meyers (right) after the announcement of her show in 2019. A Little Late with Lilly Singh received mixed reviews. Nevertheless, the show represented a major crossover moment in Hollywood, raising Lilly’s profile in the process. / Photography via NBC
The humid night air greets me as I exit the theater, and Congress Avenue has emptied out. Festival attendees are off to other premieres, or Alex Cooper’s “Unwell House,” or another one of South By’s endless amount of bar meetups and brand “activations.”
As I walk back to a friend’s place, I’m left thinking about what this moment means for Lilly’s arc. Doin’ It, to me, could seamlessly slot into Netflix’s rom-com slate without raising an eyebrow. Even though I probably wouldn’t run to a theater to see it again, the movie feels the part—it is a “real movie,” a testament to its creator’s evolution as she enters this next phase of her career.
“After a decade of making stuff for social, my brain is wired and conditioned to only think of success in a certain way, which is numbers and ‘did this go viral?’” Lilly said on the panel earlier in the day at South By. “I’ve been working on my screenwriting, but I still feel like I need to post on Instagram. Because if people aren’t watching me there, how am I going to do this other stuff?
“So it’s taken two years, literally, of my brain being like, ‘It’s okay if a million people don’t watch this on YouTube, because guess what? You’re making room for your growth, and that’s super, super hard,’” she continued.
While I leave Austin feeling hopeful for Singh, I can’t stop thinking about her film’s chances. At the time of writing, Doin’ It still hasn’t sold to a distributor.
