‘Crazy Rich Asians’ star Awkwafina set to break stereotypes
SHE WAS filming a scene with Rihanna for Ocean’s 8 in the New York Times building, as one does, and when she walked outside, it was night-time in the city where she grew up. It was beautiful and crisp and clear, and when she looked up, she saw it: The office where she used to work. The one she would take the subway to every morning, hating herself. The office where she got fired.
Back then, the rapper-actresscomedian went by her real name, Nora Lum, and although she admits she was “a (expletive) publicist,” getting canned still didn’t feel good. “I felt disgrace from being fired from that,” she said.
“It was at a time when my dad, no one, really believed that Awkwafina would be a thing.”
It was under the name Awkwafina that she released My Vag, a sharp, hilarious music video that was a direct response to a Mickey Avalon song with an unprintable title and an indirect response to the type of men who would write such a song.
Awkwafina’s video went viral. Nora Lum’s boss sent her packing.
That was in 2012. In 2018, Awkwafina, now 30, released a critically acclaimed hip-hop EP, In Fina We Trust, and is charming the masses in two of the summer’s biggest movies: As a scammer-slash-pickpocket in the aforementioned heist flick, and in Crazy Rich Asians, in which she’s the primary scene stealer as Peik Lin, the uberwealthy, borderline-manic best friend to the romantic heroine, and carries herself as though nobody told her that she’s not the star of the movie.
Director Jon Chu has admitted that when he cast Awkwafina, he “had no idea whether it was going to work. I was like, ‘This will either ruin the movie or take the movie to another level.’ But she knew exactly what she was doing.”
“I think it’s so exciting when you get to watch a star right before they explode.
And this is what we’re seeing” with Awkwafina, said Elaine Lui, a celebrity expert and founder/editor of LaineyGossip. com. “That is what Hollywood is built on: the moment a star arrives.”
Hollywood is no more diverse now than it was a decade ago, on screen or off. The new normal looks an awful lot like the old normal. It does not look very much like Crazy Rich Asians. Not yet, at least.
Awkwafina was born to a Chinese American father and a South Korean immigrant mother who died when she was four. She says it was her grandmother who really nurtured her to be funny and outgoing.
“I never cared about anything,” Awkwafina said. “I would do anything for a laugh. I would jump off a building for a laugh.” She also had “a love affair” with hip-hop. “It was my outlet for everything. Especially as kind of an angsty teen, I felt something extremely subversive about hip-hop that connected to me.”