Awkwafina

Awkwafina is an actor, born 1988.

Nora Lum was born in Stony Brook, New York, in 1988 and became Awkwafina on YouTube, where a deliberately crude 2012 rap track drew enough attention to build a music career on. An album followed in 2014, then MTV's Girl Code, then the supporting comic slot in studio comedies: Neighbors 2, Ocean's Eight, Crazy Rich Asians.

The early screen persona was a voice and an attitude, a loud downtown hustler dropped into rich people's films for contrast. It worked, and it was also a trap. The way out was The Farewell, where Lulu Wang cast her as a woman who cannot tell her grandmother the truth about a diagnosis and asked her to play the entire film in restraint. She is genuinely excellent in it, still and sad and very funny in short bursts, and it won her a Golden Globe.

Since then she has run two tracks in parallel. One is franchise support: Katy in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the comic relief in Jumanji, Renfield. The other is animation, where her voice has become one of the most in-demand in American film. Raya and the Last Dragon, The Bad Guys, Kung Fu Panda 4, The Little Mermaid, Migration. That is a great deal of voice work in a short span and the roles have started to blur into one register.

She also co-created, wrote and produced Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, a sitcom version of herself, which is the fullest picture of her comic voice and the least watched thing she has made.

TV (9)

Where to start with Awkwafina

The Farewell is the only correct starting point and the argument for taking her seriously. It is a quiet family film about a lie everybody has agreed to, and her performance is almost entirely reaction.

Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens is the deep cut worth your time, a sitcom she co-created that is far stranger and more affectionate than the title suggests. Crazy Rich Asians is the breakout comic turn, big and broad and exactly what that film needed for deflation. Quiz Lady pairs her with Sandra Oh and hands her the straight-woman role for once, which suits her better than expected. Of the blockbusters, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings uses her well and Jumanji: The Next Level uses her as a party trick. Raya and the Last Dragon is the pick of the voice work, though your tolerance for the register will vary.

The dramatic work

The Farewell is the one, and the Golden Globe was the first ever won by an Asian American woman in that category. Quiz Lady is the underrated recent one, a comedy that keeps stopping to be genuinely sad about family.

The blockbuster comedies

Studio comedy discovered she could steal a film in four scenes and then cast her that way for six years. Crazy Rich Asians is where it started, and Jumanji: The Next Level gives her the hardest job, playing Danny DeVito.

Animation and the series

The voice is unmistakable, which is why animation keeps calling: a dragon, a snake, a fox, a duck. Nora from Queens is the series she created and stars in, loosely about her own family, and it is the most personal thing she has made.

Genres Awkwafina works in

More about Awkwafina

Wikipedia