Digital star and content creator Kusha Kapila has become one of the top creators keeping the internet entertained during the lockdown. Best known for playing characters like Billi Maasi, she has over a million followers on Instagram where her sketches, such as Types Of Brides and Aunties In Lockdown, regularly cross 500k views. The internet sensation spoke to us about the unseen challenges of being a content creator and they need to draw the line to hold on to their privacy.
Edited Excerpts:
To the rest of us your job looks like one hell of a party. But what's the biggest myth about your job that you'd like to bust?
That it's easy and that anybody can do it. I have tried putting other people on the spot and they say 'I can't do this the way you do it'. I feel like when people watch my videos, they think it's easy. I remember even when I used to watch other people's videos, I used to think 'I could easily do this'. But it's really tough. You have to understand what works, you have to see what really clicks with people, and there's a lot of thought and personal sacrifice that goes into it. It's not easy, we just have to make it look easy.
As a content creator, do you still have the luxury of holding onto some privacy, or is your success correlated with how much of your real self you're willing to put out?
It's a conflict I face all the time where I think 'if I include this also then what's left? What is left for me to enjoy for myself?'. A lot of people make vlogs on YouTube, and I feel like for those, the more personality and the more of yourself you put out there, the better it is for vlogs. And I am somebody who desperately wants to vlog because I genuinely feel that people have only seen me doing characters and skits but me as a person could be just as interesting. But vlogging requires so much of your own personality to be out there because everything is fair game and nothing is really left of you and that's something you have to ask yourself about. That's why I still do characters and comedy sketches because I want to delay that as much as I can.
Even on vacation we've seen you're creating content. Your husband is now the star of so many of your videos. What does switching off mean to you? Where is that line?
There is a very small fraction of my marriage that people get to see. I speak about many things, but I don't speak things like my family because they are not comfortable being online and I know they will be subject to scrutiny. At the same time, I am very careful about what I want to share about my husband. In lockdown I have dramatically tried to reduce it because I knew he was going to be with me all the time and it would become like the Big Boss house here. But there are funny moments of a couple and you want to capture that and take a video of it, but you have to find that line and I think I have found it.