Lilly Singh, who built a career on YouTube as a comedian, is getting her own late-night show.
Ms. Singh, 30, will host a half-hour show in the 1:35 a.m. slot on NBC beginning in September, according to a statement from NBC on Thursday. She will be an executive producer on the show and will be the only woman with a late-night show on one of the so-called Big Four broadcast networks, the statement said.
“An Indian-Canadian woman with her own late-night show? Now that is a dream come true,” Ms. Singh said in the statement. The show will include in-studio interviews as well as taped skits and segments.
The announcement comes a month after the news that the late-night host Carson Daly would step away from his 1:30 a.m. show, “Last Call With Carson Daly.”
Ms. Singh’s new show, “A Little Late With Lilly Singh,” which she discussed Thursday on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” would be “kind of like my YouTube channel,” she said.
Except it would have “more than three staff members, and my sound guy won’t also be an extra and won’t also write the script,” she said.
Ms. Singh has been uploading YouTube videos since 2010 and has amassed more than 14 million subscribers. Her skits and monologues, which regularly draw from her Indian heritage and experience as a child of immigrants, cover a range of topics, including dating (especially intercultural dating), womanhood and friendship.
Her success on YouTube has also opened the door to other opportunities. Ms. Singh has acted in movies such as “Bad Moms” and “Fahrenheit 451.” Her book, “How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life,” was a New York Times best seller. Last year, she began her own production company, Unicorn Island Productions, with Polly Auritt, and the pair will partner with Universal Television to produce her new show.
“Lilly is truly a star, and we’re thrilled to welcome her to our NBC family,” Doug Vaughan, NBC Entertainment’s executive vice president for special programs and late night, said in the statement. “She is a multi-talented performer who will surely have a great rapport with not only all her guests but also with our devoted late-night audience. We can’t wait to get started.”
A spokeswoman for Ms. Singh declined to make her available for an interview on Friday.
Ms. Singh’s start on YouTube may help bring in younger viewers, said Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and the author of the book “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism.”
“Having a South Asian woman be that is huge, because we’re not used to seeing women of color in that role,” she said. “Having her sit with really big stars shows that we have a place in society.”
“That’ll be really exciting and really invigorate late night,” she said.
But Ms. Yuen said that she hoped Ms. Singh was able to use her position to bring on a diverse set of guests, and that she did not become a token pressured to produce a show similar to that of her white male peers.
Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, who teaches about Indian and global cinema and media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, shared that concern. She agreed that Ms. Singh’s appointment was significant, especially “for someone like my daughter, who is 17 years old,” she said.
But “so far, her comedy has been quite safe,” Ms. Mehta said. She would like to see Ms. Singh take on more social issues, especially those that affect other people of color, she said.
During her appearance on Mr. Fallon’s show, Ms. Singh indicated that diversity was a priority.
“I’m so excited, because I truly get to create a show from scratch,” she said. “I get to make it inclusive. I get to create comedy segments and interview people and really create something that I believe in.”
