Julius Odreman has been mistaken for Zayn Malik for ten years, but he doesn’t see it because he says he’s “not that handsome.”
Julius, from Venezuela, says his friends think he looks so much like Zayn that “people don’t even call me by my real name anymore.”
His resemblance to the former One Direction star means he is often “stopped by groups of girls on the subway or in the street.”
He also once had to pretend to be a British singer when he met a friend’s four-year-old son who was “so insistent that I was really him”.
“I didn’t want to burst his bubble because he was so excited to meet a celebrity, so I just went for it.”
He will be broadcasting Zayn on Saturday at the New York Lookalike Contest, hosted by Jazz Arnold, which was inspired by Timothée Chalamet’s contest.
“Zayn is extremely hot and it’s hard to imagine that we could find someone as beautiful as him,” she says.
She adds that it’s “fun and brave” that so many people think they look as good as Zayn, and she can’t wait to see who shows up.
For Jaz, the competition also brings people together.
“It’s hard to feel part of a community in big cities, so I wanted to do something fun that was welcoming and accepting.”
She also says that young people are “so tired of social media and the state of the world” that such a silly event “is pure escapism, even if it’s just for an hour or two”.
