Its a good thing for moviegoers that Nora Lum was, in her own words, the worst at her chosen art: playing the trumpet. Oh my god, I was horrible, says the Queens-born actress known as Akwkafina, calling from China in June, where she was filming an as-yet-untitled movie with director Lulu Wang. Though she attended New York Citys prestigious LaGuardia High School forperforming arts (a.k.a. theFameschool) specifically to study the horn, the next Dizzy Gillespie she was not. Says Lum, My dad went to a parent-teacher conference and my teacher told him, Yknow, for some students, the best thing that ever happens to them is gettingintoLaGuardia.
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Thankfully, for Lum, that turned out not to be true. Instead of ending up in a jazz quartet, shes hit the big screen in two of this summers biggest films. To play stealthy pickpocket Constance inOceans Eight, alongside Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, she was paired with a sleight-of hand coach and became proficient enough that she can snatch the watch off your wrist. For her role in Crazy Rich Asians (opens today), the highly anticipated adaptation of Kevin Kwans best-seller set in high-society Singapore, no special training was necessary. She imbued her character Goh Peik Lin, the bottle-blonde bestie to the lovelorn Rachel (played by Constance Wu), with a hip-hop swagger and a Miley Cyrus-meets-New Jersey patois, and improvised her way to some of the movies biggest laughs. (See: her gleeful gatecrashing of a party at Rachels billionaire fiancs opulent family estate.) Its a singular, unforgettable take on the often-forgettable BFF part.
So howd she get from LaGuardia misfit to blockbuster breakout? The fastest route possible: YouTube. Despite her teachers bleak assessment of her musical talents, Lum channeled a love of hip-hop into songwriting, unwittingly launching her career with the 2012 release, at the urging of a friend, of her first rap video, My Vag. Thanks to lines like My vag a chrome Range Rover, your vag hatchback 81 Toyota, it went viral (2,632,000 views and counting). And while it got Nora Lum fired from her job as a publicity assistant at a publishing company, it made Awkwafina an underground sensation.
That is what I did right, in my whole life, Lum says of posting the video. I didnt expect anything to happen. There was no game plan. I had nothing to lose, yknow. And to this day, everything that has happened to me my first movie gig, my first non-music gig was all from that.
Thats not an oversimplification. When it came time to castCrazy Rich Asians, director Jon M. Chu didnt need an agent to slide him a Nora Lum headshot. Ive watched her for years on YouTube, in her rap videos, and she had a show where she interviewed people in a bodega, Chu says. I was always a fan but had nothing to put her in, because shes just such a unique creature. Though the character of Peik Lin is very different in the book than the one on-screen (She comes from money, and thats pretty much where the similarity ends, he admits), once a friend brought up Awkwafina, I couldnt get her out of my head, Chu says. In a romantic comedy, you get very earnest, and you need someone who can pop it, who feels confident and different, not the same old sidekick.
Chu was so sure that Lum was right for the role, he included her name in his pitch packet to Warner Bros. Not that he told her that. We were coy with her, he explains. We had to do our due diligence and see everybody, but ultimately we knew she would hit it out of the park. He even had screenwriter Adele Lim start writing to her voice long before she was cast. With Awkwafina, I didnt want to give her an accent, I didnt want to lay anything on top of her spirit, he says. Shes a truth-teller. I wanted her to be the funniest, harshest she could be.
With that goal in mind, Chu also gave Lum free rein to improvise a privilege she ran with. The result: Some ofCrazy Rich Asians most uproarious scenes and, Lum notes with a mixture of pride and sheepishness, the movies only F-word. She apologized right after it slipped out, but Chu says the take was just too funny to cut. The cool thing is that Peik Lin was literally born on-screen, Lum says. Jon was never trying to steer me. A lot of times you do improv and it just goes into the heavens, but a lot of it made it into the film, and that was really, really cool.
In conversation, Lum toggles between the laid-back, unfiltered wisecracking Awkwafinatics love and a more contemplative, sincere side that may surprise those who only know her on-screen persona. Despite her bottle-rocket rise to fame, she still feels very much connected to the struggling twentysomething who just a few years ago took jobs at a video store and a sushi restaurant to pay the rent while she worked on her music and honed her comedic persona through her Verizon Go90 variety show,Tawk. Filmed in New York City delis and subway cars, it featured skits and interviews with comedians such as Pete Davidson and Hasan Minhaj, as well as a regular segment starring her sassy grandmother, whom she dubbed Grandmafina. When shes not on location in Barcelona (for the upcoming boarding school-set fantasyParadise Hills) or walking a red carpet in Hollywood, she returns to the same Greenpoint, Brooklyn, apartment shes been living in for years.
Its rent-controlled, says Lum, an only child who, after her mother died when Lum was four, was raised largely by Grandmafina. Sometimes Im sitting on my toilet, looking at my bathroom, and Im like, I cant believe this is my house, dude. This house is fucking gross. Laughing, she rattles off a laundry list of its lowlights, including foam, office-tile ceilings and a secondhand Ikea futon, adding, I need to upgrade.
Shes had a few flashes of amazement at the turn her life has taken, like when she was shooting a scene forOceanswith Rihanna in Manhattan and realized she was across the street from the publishing house that had axed her. Moments like that, I know I can tell myself, Youre OK now, she says. But then she quickly reverses course: The funny thing is, I never feel OK. Like everyone says, This is the best year of your life! Your life is never going to have any stumbles [after] this! But I dont want to think like that.
To that end, shes something of a workaholic. In addition to filming three movies set to bow in 2019 (or recording, in the case ofThe Angry Birds Movie 2), Awkwafina is fine-tuning her sophomore album, the follow-up to 2014sYellow Ranger. She considers music her first and longest-running love. Ive been with hip-hop since I was extremely young, Lum says. J Dilla, DJ Rashad, I worshipped these people. I had a Mac Book and GarageBand and started producing beats when I was 16 years old. By the time I was 18, I had 500, 600 songs I had produced or sung or rapped on, sitting on a hard drive. Even now, making beats is her escape, the first place she turns for relaxation when she gets back to her hotel after a long day on set.
People think Im a parody rapper, like a Weird Al type, but the tragic thing is, I would love to be considered a serious musician, she says. Then I did a song called Queef and that kind of shattered it. But thats how it goes.
That mix of drive and humility served Lum well on the Crazy Rich Asians set. Despite her being relatively inexperienced and self-conscious at the start of filming, Chu says Lum attacked the role, going all-out to bring Peik Lin to life. It was so fun to watch her grow and gain confidence, he says, to see an artist become the artist throughout a shoot. But as much as hes a fan of what Awkwafina brought to the role, Chu appreciates Nora more. Shes the kindest, nicest person. Yes, shes always ranting about one thing or another, but the other side of her is what I love most, actually, Chu says. Shes an observer, soaking everything in at every moment. It seems like shes always talking, but actually shes always listening. You can tell because she says brilliant stuff that you cant know if youre just always on. So my favorite part of her is her sensitivity and her anxiousness, because you know theres a real person there.
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