Lilly Singh: Changing the Face of Late Night

Come this fall, the NBC late night lineup will run as follows: straight white guy, straight white guy, and…Indian-Canadian bisexual woman.

Last night on Jimmy Fallon, YouTube star Lilly Singh – also known as Superwoman – announced her forthcoming NBC talk show “A Little Late With Lilly Singh,” set to debut in September.

A little late is an understatement. Singh will be occupying the 1:30 a.m. Eastern slot currently held by Carson Daly, but it is still a prime slot, especially considering the (white) boys club late night has historically been.

When her show premieres, Singh will be the only female host of a late night show on a major broadcast network. She is not the first – The Late Show With Joan Rivers aired on Fox from 1986-1988 – and she is not the only woman in late night overall – Busy Phillips and Samantha Bee have shows on E! and TBS respectively – but it does appear she will be the first woman of color in late night. This represents a major leap forward for a TV genre that has struggled with diversity.

Singh was raised in Scarborough and later Toronto, Canada by parents who emigrated from Punjab, India. She has lived in Los Angeles since 2015, and it’s presumed (although not confirmed) that her show would be filmed there.

As Superwoman, Singh represents YouTube royalty. Her main channel has 14.5 million subscribers and over 3 billion views, and that’s in addition to a daily vlog channel with 2 million subscribers of its own.

She has extended beyond the digital space, however, writing New York Times bestselling book “How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life.” She has also appeared in multiple films including HBO’s Fahrenheit 451, and released a few songs. She already has some interviewing experience under her belt through her Girl Love initiative (through which she interviewed Michelle Obama!). And if that's not enough, she's a philanthropist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Last month, Singh came out in a tweet describing herself as female, colored and bisexual, saying while these traits have proved to be obstacles, she is now “fully embracing them as my superpowers.” On her vlog channel, she acknowledged the tweet and flashed it on screen, and that was that. Since then, she’s used gender neutral language when talking about relationships, and in one video mentioned looking at a girl’s profile on a dating app. Otherwise it wasn’t a big deal, because it didn’t have to be. Her fans more than welcomed the news, and life went on.

Singh has been vocal about promoting diversity on YouTube and beyond, and will likely bring other diverse voices onto her show, which will include in-studio interviews as well as taped sketches. She also has the potential to bring in a younger audience – Singh is only 30 and has many young fans. Clearly she knows how to make a video get views, so creating viral clips a la James Corden and Jimmy Fallon shouldn’t be a problem.

Still, this is a big jump for Singh, and it remains to be seen what she’ll do with such a larger format and more resources. But when it comes to representation, this can only mean good things for the late night landscape.