"Siri, Siri, who is the best actress of them all?" Kangana Runout is going viral with her latest video. It is not the Bollywood actor, but mimicry artist Saloni Gaur doing her famous impersonation of the controversial motormouth. And she has once again stumped her fans and trolls alike with her perfect copy.
“People often ask why I mimic Ranaut. The answer is simple—because I’m good at it. Also, who else is in the news? Any controversy anywhere and Ranaut is right there in the middle of it. It naturally gives me enough material on her,” admits Gaur. Her Ranaut act can be compared to Brooklyn-based author and comedian Sarah Cooper’s TikTok fame, lip-synching to President Donald Trump’s famous “injecting disinfectant” statement. A celebrity and a spoof, and voila! You have the perfect recipe for Insta success.
A Delhi University student, Gaur graduated in Arts in the midst of the pandemic. She honed her standup comic act at college fests, but is quick to point out that she is not really a standup comedian. “I have been making these videos for Instagram and Twitter for the last three years. I had a steady viewership that peaked at 5,000 before the pandemic,” But as the country went under lockdown, Gaur’s career took off.
“With the lockdown, I had to vacate my hostel in Delhi and head back to my hometown Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh. There was only so much I could do at home. In order to preserve my sanity, I turned to what I knew best—short comic acts and mimicry,” she says. From her room in Bulandshahr, she tapped the pulse of the nation. Be it Nazma Aapi’s satire on what was happening in the country, challenging patriarchy with her Adarsh Bahu act, or taking on celebs with her Ananya Pandey, Neha Kakkar, Sonam K Ahuja, and of course, Ranaut impersonations, Gaur made sure that she uploaded one video every day.
Soon her followers climbed to over 2.5 lakh on Twitter and five lakh on Instagram. Today she has her own show—Uncommon Sense with Saloni—on Sony LIV. Ask her about it, and true to her style, she has a funny story to share, “One day I got a call from Sony LIV. This was during the lockdown. They wanted to have a video meeting. I asked my brother to be there, too. Throughout the meeting the connection was so poor that I could hardly make out what they were trying to say. Once it ended, I asked my brother: ‘Inka kaun sa show promote karna hai? (Which show are they asking me to promote?)’. My brother gave me a strange look and said: ‘You just landed your own show.’”
Her brother, Shubham, is also in the same profession. Five years older, he helped manage the financial aspect for his sister, and also coached her on how best to upload the videos to get maximum views.
Do the Gaur siblings experience rivalry? Or, is it all revelry?
“I would say the latter. We are each other’s sound boards. It may sound strange, but we never really had fights. Not even for the remote. I would always meekly give in to his cricket over my cartoons. I just wanted to do what he would do,” she says. For someone who never watched any cartoons, Gaur sure knows a thing or two about laughing out loud.
One-liners
Favourite film Andaz Apna Apna
One impersonation she loves doing Kangana Ranaut
Would love to mimic Sara Ali Khan
Message for her trolls You are just keyboard warriors with cheap internet.