Unashamed and always taking risks, actress stakes her claim in Hollywood
“The Prom” and the “Jumanji” sequel, just keeps getting longer. She’s particularly excited to become a part of the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe with starring roles in “Shang-Chi,” the first Marvel movie with a predominantly Asian cast, and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” an animated adventure penned by “Crazy Rich Asians” co-writer Adele Lim.
“The two stories are very special to me,” Awkwafina says. “They’re both one of a kind in their own certain ways, so I’m really excited. I just hope I do a good job.”
Awkwafina doesn’t take her success, or what it means to other people, for granted.
“After ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ people were coming up to me tearing up because it was a kind of joyous picture of representation for a lot of people who didn’t have it for years,” she says. “And when we screened ‘The Farewell’ at Sundance, I had people come up to me hours after who were absolutely shuddering, like they couldn’t control their emotions. That was very, very moving for me to experience.”
Still, Awkwafina remains wary that the industry’s increased awareness of inclusivity could fade out if not given proper and sustained support.
“I always worry about that,” she says. “I wonder if it is a trend, and we don’t want anything to be a trend — especially people.”
One way she hopes that fate can be avoided is for people like her to take matters into their own hands, like she did as a teen pressing “publish” on her YouTube page.
“I know what I want, and that’s to tell stories that make impact on people,” she says. “That’s what I have control over.”
Case in point is her upcoming Comedy Central series, an autobiographical comedy fittingly titled “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens.”
When building her writers’ room with showrunner Karey Dornetto (“Portlandia”), she pushed to find people who could write to growing up in New York and “from the Asian American experience.”
Her writers’ room ended up being mostly women, a happy accident that continues Awkwafina’s streak of working alongside more women than has traditionally been the entertainment industry norm.
Reaching out to promising new voices — like Cho once did with her — is high on Awkwafina’s priority list right now.
“I really didn’t think that I could do anything like this in TV or movies, it just didn’t seem possible,” she says. “So I do think there’s a certain power in showing other people that you could do this, too. If that’s where I can derive my power from, I’d be content with that. It’s really hard to materialize a dream if you haven’t seen it.”