Growing up, clinical counselor and life coach Ben Shabad was often told that he looked like Jeremy Allen White, best known for the roles Phillip “Lip” Gallagher on “Shameless” and Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto on “The Bear.”
So when the Glenview resident heard that two Chicago residents were hosting a look-alike contest for the celebrity Saturday, he knew he had to compete. By the end of the afternoon, Shabad was crowned the contest’s winner.
“This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced,” Shabad said. “People tell me I look like him a lot. I was encouraged by multiple people, so I figured I’d just show up and see what happens.”
As contest organizers and roommates Taylor Vaske and Kelsey Cassaro announced Shabad as the winner, they handed him his prize: $50 and a box of cigarettes.
The trend of celebrity look-alike contests began with New York City’s Timothée Chalamet rendition. Since then, the trend has gone global, from Dublin’s Paul Mescal contest to London’s Harry Styles contest.
“We were chatting about how Chicago has to do one,” Vaske said. “(Kelsey) texted me a mockup of a flyer — just being funny. In the middle of laughing about it, we printed a whole bunch of copies. We each posted a TikTok and it blew up.”
Vaske and Cassaro did not think many contestants would turn out. To their surprise, more than 100 Chicagoans gathered on the sledding hill next to Little Cubs Field in Humboldt Park to judge the look-alikes.
According to Vaske, there were around 60 Jeremy look-alikes in attendance. Roscoe Village resident Aaron Feldman was one of the many contestants.
“When I was younger and he was playing Lip, people used to tell me I looked like him all the time. Now he’s got the muscles and the tattoos — I don’t have that,” Feldman said. “I’ve been training my whole life for this moment.”
Other city residents came to judge the contest, not win it.
For Humboldt Park resident Stefanía Briones, the contest was an opportunity for community connection.
“The complete randomness of it, I love so much,” Briones said. “Things are so bleak right now, and somebody just decided to do a Jeremy Allen White look-alike contest in our neighborhood. It was perfect.”
Creating unity was Vaske and Cassaro’s goal in hosting the contest.
Vaske said she wanted the contest to do more than just find White’s doppelgänger. She wanted to bring joy to Chicago.
“Post-election, it was getting colder in Chicago and we just wanted a nice, happy day for everybody,” Vaske said. “That’s what it was.”
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