This is the summer of rapper Awkwafina
Breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians hosts the MMVAs on Sunday
New York rapper Awkwafina wanted to take a Costco chicken to the première of her new movie “Crazy Rich Asians.” But there was a problem. Her membership had expired.
“There is nothing like passing around a nice warm Costco chicken at the movies with friends,” says the 29-year-old, also known as Nora Lum.
“I will do anything for a Costco chicken. I have brought a juicy chicken more than once to the movies and it’s like the best thing.”
She is not joking. Making a dollar stretch is imperative on an artist’s budget. A few years back, she was making US$9 an hour as a cashier at a vegan bodega after being fired from her job as a publicity assistant.
Now she is going to Toronto to host Sunday’s iHeartRadio MMVAs (8 p.m. on CTV, Much and MTV) — headlining a show that will include performances by Meghan Trainor, Shawn Mendes, 98 Degrees, Bebe Rexha, Halsey, 5 Seconds of Summer, Alessia Cara and Brett Kissel.
One big reason: She is the breakout star of the summer, with a scene-stealing role in “Ocean’s 8” — alongside betterknown costars including Sandra Bullock, Mindy Kaling and Cate Blanchett — and another in the current hit comedy, “Crazy Rich Asians.”
As Singapore native Peik Lin, best friend of Constance Wu’s Rachel, she goes toe to toe with the hyperkinetic Ken Jeong and manages to come out on top.
It’s not every day that Mr. Chow from “The Hangover” movies meets his match.
But Awkwafina steals the show, drops the mic and pretty much flushes him down the toilet, despite the fact that Jeong makes an entrance as her dad with a massive Elvis-style bouffant and what looks to be a shirt made from silk drapes.
“When I found out he was playing my dad, I was so excited,” she says.
“When he came out in costume I was dying. Constance Wu is so professional she never breaks up. But she couldn’t stop laughing. He really brings it.”
With her outsized personality and Queens, N.Y., rasp, Awkwafina is an inspired choice to host the irreverent music awards.
She ticks all the boxes of youth and defiance, burnishing a hip-hop sensibility with sly humour.
In person, Lum is a far cry from her outspoken Awkwafina personality. She is a little shy, and much
more modest than the wry rapper who boasts that her vagina “speaks five different languages.”
I ask which artists at the awards she would like to collaborate with. “I’m definitely not worthy for some of these acts, so I’m just happy to see them, much less collaborate with them,” she says.
Marshmello featuring Anne-Marie and Shawn Mendes are two of the acts she is most stoked about meeting. “I’m just the host. There’s already some incredible talent on the stage,” she demurs.
Any discussion about Lum would have to start with My Vag. Because all roads seem to lead back to her lewd yet brilliant breakthrough diss track, which she posted on YouTube in 2012 and now has three million views.
“That song was everything. And I never expected it to be anything,” says Lum.
After Seth Rogen saw the video, she adds, “it got me my first movie role, in “Neighbors 2.” It got me my first talk show. It got me to where I am now.” That video also led to her role in “Ocean’s 8.”
Lum chose her distinctive stage name at the age of 16, not expecting anyone to actually call her Awkwafina. And no, despite all the Jimmy Kimmel jokes about being named after bottled water in a recent appearance, it has nothing to do with PepsiCo’s Aquafina product.
“It’s really in homage to my general personality which is kind of awkward, so I put in the Awk part,” she says. “And then Fina is fine in Italian. So I live in a kind of fine awkwardness.”
Born to a Chinese father and Korean mother, Lum was always a creative child.
She went to LaGuardia High School, also known as the school from “Fame,” and ended up majoring in journalism and women’s studies at New York’s University at Albany.
The upside of Lum’s success is that her father no longer wants her to be an air traffic controller, a job he considered stable and in-demand. And her grandmother, who she refers to as “Grandmafina” in many of her YouTube videos, loved “Crazy Rich Asians.”
“My grandmother basically said I wasn’t even acting. I was just playing myself,” Lum says. “But she also said I wasn’t in there a lot. She wanted like the whole movie to be about me.”
I ask whether “Crazy Rich Asians” breaks stereotypes, or simply reinforces them, by typecasting Asians as wealthy and boorish.
“I think it breaks stereotypes by not addressing them,” she says.
“These are just characters who are in their world and they don’t have to justify anything to anyone. Frequently when you have one lone Asian character in a film, he has to do all the heavy lifting to explain things and then that character becomes a stereotype and representative of all Asians.
“But with ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ there are so many characters and so many sides dealing with their own issues and problems that these characters become real people with real identities.”
I’m not sure that is the ultimate takeaway of the movie. But it’s hard to take issue with the Asian community’s Wakanda moment especially when it’s taken so long for us to get here.
Not all representation is necessarily good. But she’s right. Representation in a multitude of shades can be better than continued marginalization.
As a result, Awkwafina is more in demand than ever. She is developing a show for Comedy Central. There is another rap album on the way. And she has another movie, the science fiction thriller “Paradise Hills,” starring Milla Jovovich and Emma Roberts, that’s due next year.
Last week, when “Crazy Rich Asians” opened, Lum snuck into the theatre at Union Square on Broadway, or at least as much as you can sneak in with Ken Jeong by your side and other friends. She didn’t bring a chicken. But that’s OK, she was too busy high-fiving everybody and greasy hands probably wouldn’t have been cool.
The experience, she says, was “amazing. This movie has had so much impact.”
Over the weekend, “Crazy Rich Asians” made history, pulling in more than $34 million over five days and settling at No. 1 at the North American box office — unprecedented for a film with a majorityAsian cast.
“You guys showed up and made history,” Lum wrote on Twitter.
“When I am my grandma’s age I will tell the kids the story about ‘Crazy Rich Asians.’ Hopefully by then they’ll find it hard to believe.”