CRAZY RICH ASIANS
“SERIOUSLY, WHO IS AWKWAFINA?” ASKS, er, Awkwafina. “Like, who the hell is that?” No, the 29-year-old isn’t having an identity crisis. She’s just not sure how to answer the question. A few years ago, “Awkwafina” was simply the stage name for Nora Lum, an New York rapper- comedian who made ultra-vulgar music videos and broke out in 2012 with “My Vag”, an epic anthem about, well, you know. “She’s weird,” she says of her persona, “and her audience will always be specific.” Which is why, at this moment in time, she’s struggling to define herself.
This winter, Awkwafina stars in a pair of highly anticipated, highly mainstream movies: Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians. She called WHO from Barcelona, where she’s working on her next big-screen role, in the sci-fi thriller Paradise Hills. Between projects, she’s been fine-tuning her second album, which she plans to release by the end of 2018. So yeah, it’s been a lot. “It’s literally a night on LSD,” she jokes. “If I could imagine what the most insane acid trip could be, that’s what it’s been like.”
More insanity’s headed her way once Crazy Rich Asians opens. In the big-screen adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, Awkwafina steals every scene she’s in as Goh Peik Lin, a wealthy college friend and confidante to the heroine, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu). On paper, Peik Lin mainly serves to help Rachel adapt to her extravagant new surroundings in Singapore; on film, in Awkwafina’s hands, she becomes the blonde ball of manic energy that director Jon M. Chu says “ignited” the film. “Honestly, I had no idea whether it was going to work,” he marvels. “I was like, ‘This will either ruin the movie or take the movie to another level.’ But she knew exactly what she was doing.”
Awkwafina doesn’t think so. ”I still don’t know what the hell that is,” she says, referring to her Peik Lin—but then again, she’s made bold leaps ever since her teens. While attending Laguardia High School (yes, of Fame) for trumpet performance, she developed a taste for hip-hop and at 16 created Awkwafina, an eccentric alter ego who wears oversize glasses, tosses peace signs, and raps about weed. Then, after finding her footing in music, she put Awkwafina on the back burner to pursue acting. Before long, she’d made her bigscreen debut in 2016’s Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising and nabbed big-name, back-to-back roles (her character Constance in Ocean’s 8 is a pickpocket). The speed of all that success has made her, she admits, a little nervous. “I just have this really embedded, like, Asiangrandma complex built in me, this kind of doomsday, end-of-the-world vibe. In my experience in this industry, when it rains, it pours. When it’s slow, it’s nothing.”
Lucky for her, she has Awkwafina, who… Wait, who is she again? “Awkwafina is someone that I think never grew up, never felt the need to be filtered,” she concludes. “Nora is brooding, neurotic, over-thinking, completely full of anxiety, and Awkwafina kind of deafens all of that noise.” See, no identity crisis there.