Jamie Lever says she got hired for Comedy Circus without using her father’s name, recalls how Krushna Abhishek and Bharti Singh started ‘ragging’ her

Comedian Jamie Lever started doing comedy almost a decade ago and now, the actor has shared that when she started her journey in comedy, her father Johnny Lever did not make calls or show her a path to become a successful comedian in Bollywood. Jamie, in a chat with Cyrus Broacha, recalled that her first break was through Sony TV’s Comedy Circus where she got hired using her stage name and the makers had no idea that they were actually hiring Johnny Lever’s daughter.

“Daddy did not want me to go on it. He was like ‘I don’t know how it will be’. He wasn’t very sure about it,” she shared. When Jamie went for her audition, she used her then stage name Jamie J and was hired the same evening. After she was finalised for the show, she met the rest of the cast and crew, which is where the team realised that she was related to the icon. “I met Sudesh, Krushna and Bharti at the cast and crew meet. They started ragging us. They were fully taking my case and asked me ‘what does your father do?'” she recalled. When she finally revealed her father’s name, she said, “At this point, Sudesh ji went ‘Arre beta, you are like our daughter’. They felt like she’s a part of the family now. We have a responsibility now to take care of her.”

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Jamie said that after the makers got to know that she is Johnny’s daughter, they wanted her to do impressions of her father in every episode. “They would say ‘there should be a little bit of Johnny Lever’ because we have to hammer it that she is Johnny Lever’s daughter and that we have launched her,” she shared.

But before Jamie made it to national television, she was trying her hand at stand-up comedy in Mumbai’s comedy clubs but that came to an abrupt end after one of the managers at a club insisted that Jamie should start cussing in her set. “The manager specifically said that do some below the belt comedy like put some vulgar words, put in some cuss words. I said I don’t do that. She said it sounds really nice when a girl says it. I said no this is not happening,” she said.

Jamie recalled that because she wouldn’t agree with the manager, she did not get as many spots. “I told the manager that you have no idea which family I come from and the expectations and responsibility I have. She said your dad will understand. I said no my dad is known for doing clean comedy,” she recalled and soon after, she quit that job.

Jmaie will next be seen in Vidyut Jammwal starrer Crakk.

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