Lilly Singh Reveals How Her Mom's Group Chat Inspired a Hilarious Heist Movie She Plans To Produce
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Lilly Singh just revealed the plot of a movie she’s hoping to develop and if it was possible to pre-book tickets to see it, we would be buying out an entire theater.
Singh joined author Kara Swisher at SHE Media’s SXSW panel, which also featured stars like Brooke Shields and Sophia Bush, and touched on some of her upcoming projects, including her hopes of producing a heist movie inspired by one of her mom’s WhatsApp group chats.
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“I have a slate of movies and TV shows that I want to make,” she said before explaining the concept behind what we can already tell will be an epic heist movie. “I’m obsessed with my mom. She’s an immigrant woman from India who just crushes it and kills it.”
“They’re a group of aunties that make sex jokes, they take shots,” she says of her mom’s seemingly hilarious inner circle of fellow Indian-American women. “They’re not what we see on TV. I want to make a heist movie about them.”
Singh had us at heist movie but her proposed plot for the movie is only making us more hyped for her production company, Unicorn Island, to get this on the silver screen. Singh explains: “They go to their holy grail every Sunday. It’s not brunch, it’s Costco. They win a trip, they go on a cruise, they get kidnapped because another rival gang thinks they’re a real gang.”
“And it’s this whole heist movie where you get to see these women be so empowered, they get to be the main character. Because they never treat themselves like the main character, I want to make them the main character. I want to make stories like that.”
Singh founded Unicorn Island in 2018 and, with the production company, focuses on telling stories about underrepresented people in the media, with a particularly strong emphasis on South Asian perspectives, according to StyleCaster. After a string of releases including The Mindful Adventures of Unicorn Island and Kick Ass Drag Queen, Singh just premiered her lastest movie, Doin’ It, at SXSW. “It’s about a 30-something-year-old Indian American virgin who accidentally finds herself teaching sex ed,” she explains. “It’s a commentary on sex education in schools and how there’s a lack thereof.”
Singh notes that the movie is really about one woman’s journey to finding a relationship with her own body after a lifetime of being told what is right or wrong when it comes to her own autonomy. “Essentially she’s unlearning shame, because shame is the weapon of mass destruction used against most girls and women,” Singh said at SXSW. “We’re taught to shame them about every single thing — they’re too much of this or not enough of this — and I think it very often happens with sex.”
As the multi-hyphenate entertainer told SheKnows back in December 2023: “In all the work I do, I’m always hoping to make a positive impact in the world.”
Doin’ It was independently funded “by a group of South Asian people — majority doctors — who came together to finance this film,” Singh explained. “It takes a village. This movie might not have been made by traditional means because it is through the lens of an Indian woman. So, independently financed — I’m very proud of that.”
Before you go, click here to see celebrity women of color share the first movie or TV character who made them feel seen.
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