Australian Actress That Is Really Funny
Australian comedian Celeste Barber has been voted as one of the funniest women on the internet, taking out a WhoHaha female comedy award alongside the likes of comedians Melissa McCarthy, Anna Kendrick, Leslie Jones and Amy Schumer.
Barber was voted WhoHaha's Funniest Lady on Instagram for her satirical account that has the NSW mother of four recreating pictures of models, actresses and Instagram celebrities.
Her real-takes on the perfectly timed, styled and edited images highlight how bizarre these photos of the rich and famous would be if "normal people" did the same, and are a huge hit with her audience of 1.7 million Instagram followers.
A digital award, Barber woke up to the news she had won the WhoHaha — beating out five other accounts including Claudia Oshry's Girl With No Job and Jessica Anteby's beige cardigan, that have more than 2 million and 3 million followers respectively.
"I was in bed this morning and I got an email saying 'Congratulations, you've won!'," Barber told the ABC.
WhoHaha is a website that presents itself as a digital space for female creators to share their content with a wider audience and aims to shine the spotlight on funny women "from Amy Schumer and Mindy Kaling to your 15-year-old neighbour who started her own YouTube channel".
Co-founded by actress, director and producer Elizabeth Banks — of The Hunger Games, Spider Man and The Lego Movie series — WhoHaha writes on their website Banks herself scours the internet for the funniest women the web has to offer on all platforms.
That search, it seems, led WhoHaha to Barber's Instagram — even though it was not Banks herself who delivered the good news.
"Elizabeth Banks was probably busy filming Pitch Perfect 17 or whatever," Barber laughed.
But the magnitude from the win seems to still be emerging, with Barber's US-based managing agency meeting with industry heavyweights to discuss future opportunities. But Barber's keeping a cool head.
"Hopefully this makes them go, 'Oh, wow, yeah, she is funny' or they might just go, 'She just takes funny photos'," she said.
Ultimately, Barber said she would like her own show.
"Like Inside Amy Schumer but take out Amy Schumer and whack me in — that would be amazing".
Accidental role model
Looking through the comments on her Instagram posts, there is no doubt her audience loves her content for her 'keeping-it-real attitude'.
It is her audacity to poke fun at celebrities by curling, stretching and bending herself into any position — sometimes in underwear or swimwear, unedited and without filters — that has attracted an audience that values her body confidence — something she had not expected.
"But I'm pretty stoked that it makes people go, 'Actually you know what, I have a body, and there's a beach and therefore I have a beach body'."
Barber said she tries to live by the adage there is more to life than how you look, and when asked to promote slimming teas or diet shakes to her largely female Instagram audience, she sticks to her guns.
"But in the P.S. I want to know, 'how much money would you ACTUALLY pay me?'"
For now, Barber plans to keep her posts coming.
"There is a plethora of stuff to do, and the more I do it, the more fun I have with it," she said.
"I've opened the vault, or the flood gates are open, something is open — whatever that cliche is — it's open. And it's now flooding."
What started out as a funny account — after a personal challenge with her sister to show how 'normal people' would look recreating photos of the rich and famous — her Instagram has become part of her job as a comedian.
"[My Instagram] is getting me work now, so I'm happy to do the work," she said.
And with two sold-out live shows in Sydney and a national tour on the cards for the end of the year, Barber does not plan to stop working towards her goal of her own show — Inside Celeste Barber (titled to be confirmed).
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Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-25/australian-comedian-celeste-barber-named-funniest-lady-on-insta/8559070