Named in the category Best comic actress of the year at the Golden Globes (which took place the night of January 5 to 6), Awkafina received 20 minutes before this ceremony.
What is your reaction to this nomination?
It’s still surreal for me. I come from a very modest family and I never had any piston to succeed. Winning or losing is really not important to me. It is to be accepted, recognized and therefore appointed as an actress who is the most beautiful of gifts.
Your film traces the return to China of a young American girl who has almost no connection with her parents’ country. Is this your story?
Mine not, but that of our director, Lulu Wang. She drew on her private life and her grandmother to write the script. I grew up in New York between a Chinese father born in the USA and a Korean mother. I do not speak Mandarin at all, so The farewell was a plunge into a world of which I knew nothing. But I was oddly quickly recognized in this Chinese family. a must be in my genes.
How strong is your film, which is a success in the United States?
We are all immigrants. Whether it’s our parents or grandparents, we all live in a country that has hosted our ancestors at one time or another. Few can claim one country out of five or six generations.
What was the most intense scene for you?
The scene where my character, Billi, is with his grandmother. I did not understand a word of what the Chinese actress was saying to me and I had to cry while answering her.
How did you manage to play the film without speaking Mandarin?
I spent a year in China just before the Olympics there and took classes. But after twelve months I was just able to order my Big Mac at McDo (she laughs).
What did you learn during the filming in China?
I learned that it was bad luck to drop your chopsticks (Laughter). The first time this happened to me, my neighbors cried out in amazement. It seems that we must quickly pick them up and rotate them above his head to ward off bad luck.
Will the rapper Awkwafina definitely leave the place of the actress under your real name, Nora?
My difference is my strength! I imagined my alter ego 13 years old, because I was shy and reserved in class. By becoming Awkwafina, I was no longer afraid of the eyes of others, nor of the ridiculous. My mother died when I was a child and I mostly grew up with my paternal grandmother. She taught me to be proud of my difference. At first, people made fun of my clothing choices, my way of rapping or talking. Today, it is this difference that allowed me to have my Hollywood career.
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