Otter Lee traces his life from 'a super-serious, quiet baby' to 'an authentic, snarky, and sexy version' of himself.
I live as an authentic, snarky, and sexy version of myself
I was a super-serious, quiet baby that barely smiled and didn’t trust white people. My parents thought I would become a civil rights lawyer or a judge. When I was two I got a bunch of work as a baby model and, apparently, I was a total diva and monster on set. I knew exactly what the director wanted in a shot, but I refused to perform unless I was promised the toy or food props being featured alongside me.
Two baby books in they decided that they didn’t want me to grow up like that.
I reignited my knack for performing in elementary school for an assignment where we had to show our understanding of the Egyptian gods. I wrote, acted in, and filmed this unhinged little skit where Osiris confronts his brother Set for chopping him up and scattering the body parts on The Jerry Springer Show. I daresay it was a more faithful adaptation of Egyptian mythology than 2016’s Gods of Egypt.
Throughout middle and high school, I performed in theatre productions and musicals, but I found myself mired by institutional racism throughout. My first onstage role was Daddy Warbucks’ driver in Annie because he was Asian in the movie.
In college, I hit a huge wall where I was only able to be cast in projects I wrote myself, but still discouraged from it. There were incidents where I wrote a role as Asian-American, but felt pressure from faculty or creative teams to cast a white person in a role. While studying abroad in London, I joined UCL’s Blank Slates improv troupe, which felt incredibly liberating and validating. They didn’t care about my race or my sexual orientation; they just knew me as funny and bitchy!
After college, I was getting a little bit of work as an actor and improv comedian, but experienced many microaggressions. I had an assistant director on an Off-Broadway Shakespeare production ridicule me with racist insults then claim my casting was a sign that she could not possibly be problematic.
I felt exasperated and exhausted from having to defend my right to perform in the theatre world, so I started performing stand-up comedy. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely and vocally racist, often more overtly so than theatre, but it came with two distinct benefits. The first was that I could rely completely on the strength of my own writing and performances. The second was that if anyone, audience member or fellow performer, said something that messed up to me, I could retaliate with my own roasts.
Six years later, I’m very much in love with the adventures my career has taken me on. Now I live as an authentic, snarky, and sexy version of myself onstage and on-camera. I get to tell my stories and sing dirty Disney princess parody songs in venues across the UK and Scotland.
My old improv teammates from UCL are all doctors and scientists now because they were intelligent people who weren’t banking on comedy as a career, but having them in the audience at my shows has been the most gratifying, loving experience and a testament to how far I’ve come.
