Mallika Dua

Mallika Dua
Nationality	Indian
Education	Modern School
Alma mater	Franklin and Marshall College
Occupation	Actor comedian writer
Years active	2016–present
Parent(s)	Vinod Dua

Mallika Dua is an Indian actress, comedian and writer. She is known for her on-point comic timing, and for the quintessential Delhi-based character, Makeup Didi. The actress shot to fame with the viral video of Shit People Say: Sarojini Nagar Edition,^[1] which was written, styled and enacted by Dua herself. She is the daughter of Indian journalist Vinod Dua.^[2]

Early life

Mallika was schooled at the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi. Mallika is half-Derawali Punjabi and half-Tamil Brahmin. The inspiration for her short videos on social media are from Delhi and its Punjabis. Mallika is also a theater major from Franklin and Marshall College in the US. Her advertising career started as a trainee at McCain Erickson and later at Contract Advertising.

Career

From August 2016, she moved to Mumbai formally to be a full-time entertainer. She launched her own YouTube channel in 2017 and has recently been working with All India Bakchod .^[3] Mallika has appeared in the first episode of Girliyapa, Why Should Hot Girls Have All the Fun?^[4] and in the Bindass web series The Trip. She also made a special appearance in Saket Chaudhary's Hindi Medium sharing screen space with Irrfan Khan in 2017. She played a true blue Punjabi girl in the film quite similar to her real life personality.^[5] In September 2017, she appeared as one of the three mentors along with Zakir Khan and Hussain Dalal for the fifth season of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge which is judged by the actor Akshay Kumar.

Controversy

In a Facebook post, Vinod Dua posted the edited video and wrote: “I am going to screw this cretin Akshay Kumar for telling his co-worker Mallika Dua that “aap bell bajao main aap ko bajata hun” at 5:26.This is his sense of humour and language. Star Plus..wake up.."^[6]

Causes

Mallika's videos are satirical in nature depicting the harsh reality of the society with a dash of humour. She strongly believes in the cause of Feminism and uses her social networking platforms as a tool for women's empowerment and for also expressing her liberal ideologies and open-minded opinions on social causes and issues concerning women. Mallika has actively voiced her opinion against sexual harassment of women at workplace, casual sexism among others. She was also one of the pioneers of the social media movement Me Too (Hashtag) where she was one of the first known faces to recount her own experience of being sexually harassed as a child to encourage her fan following (both men and women) to share their experiences as well and to stand up for the cause. She has also defied gender stereotypes through her videos and hashtag activism slamming body-shaming,^[7] fat-shaming^[8] carving a niche for herself in the industry inspiring the youth.

References