Awkwafina, the rapper fired over a viral song who went on to make Golden Globes history

Awkwafina

Photo: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	June 2, 1988 Stony Brook, New York, USA
Occupation	Actress, comedian, rapper and producer
Known for	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Raya and the Last Dragon, Jumanji: The Next Level
Awards	Golden Globe · 2 Libera · Satellite Award · Santa Barbara International Film Festival Virtuoso · Saturn Award · Emmy

Nora Lum lost a job because of a rap song. In her early twenties she was working as a publicity assistant at Rodale Books in New York when her employer recognised her in a YouTube video she had made in college, a crude, very funny track called “My Vag” that she had written as a reply to Mickey Avalon. The video went viral, and the publishing house let her go. Seven years later, under the stage name she had invented as a teenager, she walked onto the stage of the Golden Globes and became the first person of Asian descent to win a Globe in any lead actress film category, for playing a grieving granddaughter in Lulu Wang‘s The Farewell.

Those two moments sit at either end of one of the stranger routes into Hollywood of the last fifteen years. Awkwafina went from a bedroom rapper with GarageBand to Comedy Central showrunner, Marvel sidekick, Disney dragon and Emmy-winning producer, and she has kept both halves of her persona in play: the brash comic who improvises half her lines and the quieter actress who carried a film about grief in Mandarin and English. Now in her late thirties, she has just signed with CAA, has a Laika film opening in October and a Christmas comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger in December, and is preparing an Apple TV series about the family restaurant trade she never learned to cook for.

Stony Brook, Forest Hills and a grandmother

She was born Nora Lum on June 2, 1988, in Stony Brook, New York, the only child of Wally Lum, a Chinese American who worked in information technology, and Tia Lum, born Hong Hyun Joo, a Korean American painter. Her mother died of pulmonary hypertension in 1992, when Nora was four. She was raised by her father and her paternal grandparents, and the central figure of her childhood became her grandmother, Powah Lum, a nurse at Stony Brook University Hospital. Her Chinese name was chosen by her grandfather, Lin Yihe, who worked as a research assistant at Columbia University.

The family had deep roots in Queens. Her great-grandfather, Jimmy Lum, emigrated from Xinhui, in Guangdong, in 1937 and opened Lum’s, a Cantonese restaurant in Flushing that was one of the first Chinese restaurants in the neighbourhood. Her paternal grandparents stayed in China until 1965 and then settled in Whitestone, Queens; her mother’s family arrived from Gunwi County, near Daegu, in 1972. Nora grew up in Forest Hills and got into Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, the Manhattan performing arts school, where she played the trumpet and trained in classical music and jazz.

The name came early. At fifteen she adopted “Awkwafina,” a nickname a friend had coined, and turned it into an alter ego for the loud, confident person that the quiet teenager was not. She has described that character as “definitely a person I repressed.” The name was also a joke about the way brands such as Neutrogena feminise themselves, and about her own sense of being “awkwardly fine.” Her early influences were writers and musicians rather than comedians: Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Tom Waits and Chet Baker.

Beijing, Albany and the song that cost her a job

From 2006 to 2008 she studied Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University, largely so she could talk properly with her grandmother. She then majored in journalism and women’s studies at the University at Albany, graduating in 2011, and interned at the Gotham Gazette in New York and at the Times Union newspaper in Albany. Journalism was the plan. Music was what she did at night.

She had been rapping since she was thirteen, first producing beats on GarageBand and later teaching herself Logic Pro and Ableton. “My Vag,” written at college as a response to Mickey Avalon’s “My Dick,” landed on YouTube in 2012 and spread fast. It also ended her job at Rodale Books when the company discovered it. She took a job at a vegan bodega, DJed in New York bars and kept releasing tracks online. Her debut album, Yellow Ranger, came out on February 11, 2014, and gathered eleven songs including the title track and “NYC Bitche$.”

The music was comic but never only a joke. In 2016 she recorded “Green Tea” with Margaret Cho, a track that takes apart stereotypes about Asian women, and she appeared in Bad Rap, a documentary about Asian American rappers that was selected for the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival alongside Dumbfoundead, Rekstizzy and Lyricks. Her 2018 EP, In Fina We Trust, won the A2IM Libera Award for best hip-hop and rap album in 2019. She also wrote a guidebook, Awkwafina’s NYC, published in 2015.

Girl Code, Tawk and a first foot in film

Television found her through MTV. She appeared in six episodes of the third and fourth seasons of Girl Code in 2014, then co-hosted its spin-off, Girl Code Live, in 2015. From 2015 to 2017 she hosted Tawk, a short-form talk show for the digital studio Astronauts Wanted that began on YouTube, moved to Verizon’s Go90 platform, was named an official honoree at the 2016 Webby Awards and picked up a Streamy nomination.

Her first film parts were small. In 2016 she played Christine, a member of the Kappa Nu sorority, in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, and voiced Quail in the animated comedy Storks. She had a recurring part in the Hulu series Future Man in 2017 and played one of four friends in the indie comedy Dude. Then 2018 changed the scale of everything. She joined the all-female heist cast of Ocean’s 8 as Constance, a street hustler, next to Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Rihanna, and two months later arrived in cinemas as the scene-stealer of Crazy Rich Asians.

Peik Lin and a night hosting SNL

In Jon M. Chu’s romantic comedy she played Goh Peik Lin, the Singaporean college friend of Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), the one character allowed to say out loud how absurd the Young family’s wealth is. The film became a box office event and a talking point about Asian representation in studio cinema, and her performance, loud, loyal and fast, was the one audiences quoted on the way out. It showed that the internet rapper could hold a frame in a big studio film without shrinking her own voice.

On October 6, 2018, she hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the second East Asian American woman to do so after Lucy Liu, whose episode she has credited as the moment she decided she wanted to be famous enough to host. One of her sketches was an impression of Sandra Oh, who would host the show herself later that season. That year she also appeared in Gap’s “Logo Remix” campaign next to SZA, and Kore Asian Media had already named her its female breakout of 2017.

The Farewell and a Golden Globe

The turn that redefined her came in 2019. In The Farewell, written and directed by Lulu Wang from her own family story, Awkwafina played Billi, a struggling New York writer who travels to China when her grandmother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, only to find that the family has decided not to tell the old woman. The part asked her to be still, to listen, to speak Mandarin on screen and to carry scenes where almost nothing is said. The Mandarin she had gone to Beijing to learn, for her own grandmother, became part of the performance.

Critics embraced the film, and in January 2020 she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, the first person of Asian descent to win a Globe in any lead actress film category, and only the sixth woman of Asian descent to be nominated in that category at all. She also won the Satellite Award for Best Actress in a musical or comedy, received the Virtuoso Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, shared a Screen Actors Guild ensemble nomination and was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

Jumanji, a Marvel sidekick and a dragon

Studio franchises followed immediately. In December 2019 she joined Jumanji: The Next Level as Ming Fleetfoot, a thief avatar inside the game, and the sequel was a commercial hit; she also lent her voice to The Angry Birds Movie 2 the same year. In July 2019 Marvel cast her as Katy, the best friend of the title character played by Simu Liu, in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and co-starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the film opened in September 2021, grossed about 430 million dollars worldwide and won her the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Six months earlier Disney had released Raya and the Last Dragon, in which she voiced Sisu, the last dragon of the title. She improvised much of her dialogue, and the loose, riffing energy of the character drew comparisons with Robin Williams as the Genie in Aladdin. From then on, animation became a steady second career running alongside her live action work.

Nora from Queens

The project closest to her own life was television. Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens premiered on Comedy Central on January 22, 2020, with Awkwafina as co-creator, writer, executive producer and star. She played Nora Lin, a directionless twenty-something in Queens raised by her father (played by BD Wong) and her grandmother (Lori Tan Chinn), with Bowen Yang as her cousin: a comic version of the household she actually grew up in. To promote the launch, she recorded joke announcements for the 7 train of the New York City Subway, reminding riders at Hunters Point Avenue that “seats are for people, not your bag.”

The show ran for three seasons, the second premiering in August 2021 and the third in April 2023, and it drew a guest list that read like a map of Asian American comedy and acting at the time: Simu Liu appeared before Shang-Chi opened, alongside Ming-Na Wen, Margaret Cho, Stephanie Hsu, Ken Jeong and Ronny Chieng. It gave her something films could not, control over the story, and it is the clearest record of how she sees the grandmother who raised her.

The accent debate

Her rise also brought criticism she has had to answer more than once. Writers and activists accused her of borrowing from African American Vernacular English, of using a “blaccent” and mannerisms associated with Black performers, particularly in her early rap persona and in parts such as Peik Lin. In 2018 she said she welcomed that conversation, because Asian American identity was “still trying to figure out what that is.” On February 5, 2022, she posted a longer statement, saying that as a non-Black person of colour she would “always listen and work tirelessly to understand the history and context of AAVE,” and then stepped away from Twitter. Some critics found the response late and short of an apology; others, such as the Vulture writer Lauren Michele Jackson, argued that her Queens upbringing and hip-hop background complicated the charge. The discussion has followed her ever since.

Voices for hire and a producer’s Emmy

The years after Shang-Chi were busy and uneven. She voiced Ms. Tarantula, the hacker known as Webs, in DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys in 2022 and returned for The Bad Guys 2, released in the United States on August 1, 2025. In 2023 she played Rebecca Quincy, a New Orleans police officer, opposite Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage in the horror comedy Renfield, which flopped at the box office, voiced Scuttle in Disney’s live action The Little Mermaid, and played Chump, the one-footed leader of a New York pigeon gang, in Illumination’s Migration. She narrated the National Geographic documentary series A Real Bug’s Life, voiced Zhen, a corsac fox and thief, opposite Jack Black in Kung Fu Panda 4, and played an imaginary friend called Bubble in John Krasinski’s IF, both in 2024.

The most satisfying result of that period came as a producer. Quiz Lady, directed by Jessica Yu and released on Hulu in November 2023, cast her as Anne Yum, a shy game show obsessive dragged on a road trip by her chaotic older sister, played by Sandra Oh, the same Sandra Oh she had impersonated on SNL. Awkwafina produced the film with Oh and Will Ferrell, and in 2024 it won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie. In August 2024 she also led Jackpot!, Paul Feig’s action comedy for Prime Video, as Katie, a former child actor who wins a lottery in which anyone can legally kill the winner before sundown, with John Cena as her self-appointed bodyguard.

2026: Wonderland, CAA and a severed thumb

This year has been one of repositioning. In March 2026 Deadline reported that she had signed with CAA. In June Disney confirmed her as the voice of Chessy Cheshire, daughter of the Cheshire Cat and narrator of Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, directed by Kimmy Gatewood, which premiered on Disney Channel on July 16 and on Disney+ the following day, putting her in front of a generation that may not know The Farewell at all.

She has also wrapped Thumb, a black comedy directed by Daina Oniunas-Pusić from a script by the Nicholl Fellowship winner Cesar Vitale. Milly Alcock stars as a lonely woman who receives a severed thumb in the mail and becomes obsessed with returning it to its owner; Awkwafina is part of an ensemble with Kate McKinnon, Sofía Vergara, Hannibal Buress and Stavros Halkias. The film shot in New York from November 2025 and does not yet have a release date.

What comes next: Laika, Santa and the family kitchen

The autumn is crowded. Wildwood, Laika’s stop-motion adaptation of the Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis novel, directed by Travis Knight, premieres at the BFI London Film Festival on October 11 and opens in the United States on October 23 through Fathom Entertainment. Awkwafina voices Septima, a rat, in a cast led by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay and Carey Mulligan that also includes Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett and Tom Waits, one of the musicians she named as an early influence. At 132 minutes it is the longest stop-motion feature ever made, and Laika’s first PG-13 film.

On December 2, Prime Video releases The Man with the Bag, Adam Shankman’s Christmas action comedy, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Santa Claus and Alan Ritchson plays Vince, with Awkwafina in the ensemble alongside Liza Koshy, Kyle Mooney, Jane Krakowski and Ken Jeong. And still without a premiere date is the project that looks most like her: The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina, an eight-episode unscripted series for Apple TV, which she stars in and executive produces. It follows her across the United States as she reconnects with the restaurant roots of the family that ran Lum’s in Flushing, working with chefs, restaurateurs and relatives to learn the cooking she never picked up as a child.

It is a fitting next chapter for someone whose best work keeps coming back to the same people. The grandmother who raised her is in Nora from Queens, the grandmother of another family is at the heart of The Farewell, and the great-grandfather who opened a Cantonese restaurant in 1937 is now the starting point for a food series. The girl who invented Awkwafina to hide behind has spent fifteen years using her to go home.

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Tags: actors, actresses, Awkwafina, Lulu Wang, Sandra Oh, The Farewell, Crazy Rich Asians, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

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