India, Oct. 13 -- Jamie Lever recently shared the stage with her father, veteran comedian Johnny Lever, in Kolkata. For the comedian-actor, performing alongside her father is less about being his co-performer and more about learning from him. "I think it's just I'm not like in his show, I feel more like a student. Even while I'm performing, I'm just observing a master at his craft, you know, perform and just create magic on stage," she says. "I'm just like, I am just fully in student mode. I'm just like, I'm here to learn."

But getting to this point has meant first finding her own identity outside her father's legacy. "Even to this date, I think that the surname Lever is so heavy on me. It weighs really heavy on me," Jamie tells us. She ...