There comes a time when any actor asked by Walt Disney Studios to voice a legendary dragon for a major animated film is likely to hit a creative snag.
For Awkwafina, 32, that moment came when she was asked to growl as Sisu in Raya and the Last Dragon. The Crazy Rich Asians star has many skills, but dragon growl was not one of them. She warned directors Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada.
"I was a little bit nervous about that," Awkwafina says, speaking over Zoom from her New York home. "It was like, ‘Guys, I just want you to know before I do the growl, I don’t know what this is going to sound like. I’m just preparing you’."
But after a few game snarls, the film-makers were not unimpressed.
"They were like, ‘It wasn’t that bad’," she recalls. Not that it was essential. The key to casting Awkwafina (born Nora Lum) for Disney’s animated Southeast Asian adventure alongside princess Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) is that this blue fur-covered dragon turns out to be not so fearsome.
"The idea was to portray the legend that Sisu is this amazing, mythical super-dragon, and Raya finds this to be a little bit of an embellishment through the years," says Hall. "Instead, Sisu is a funny, self-deprecating dragon who sees herself as the perennial C-student."
The food-obsessed, clumsy dragon (born Sisudatu) even admits onscreen, "I’m not, like, the best dragon." That makes the Awkwafina casting pure genius, even if nailing the performance now requires the actress to kick her self-deprecation skills into overdrive.
Awkwafina’s movie success is an ever-expanding universe in the wake of her fan-favourite turn in Crazy Rich Asians and her dramatic breakthrough in 2019’s The Farewell. During the industry work stoppage of the Covid-19 pandemic alone, the Queens, New York-born rapper and actress, who broke out with the rowdy 2014 video My Vag, performed her Raya voice role remotely and completed her unlikely entry into the Marvel Universe with the live-action Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (due out mid-year).
The concept blows her mind.
"Being in the Marvel universe and voicing a Disney animated movie, that’s insane," she stammers. "And that’s been a big part of my life this year."
Awkwafina felt like a certified big shot when Raya film-makers sent her a special audio production tent for her home recording acoustics. Some would grumble about a six-foot-tall recording tent dominating their living room. She made it an adventure.
"I put a lamp in there. And I was like, I want to spend the rest of my days here in this tent. I want to retire in here," Awkwafina says. "I asked Disney afterwards, ‘Hey can I keep it?’. And it was like, "‘Absolutely not. We need that back immediately’."
The intensive voice work continued when Awkwafina was quarantined in an Australian hotel last August, a required health measure to finish Shang-Chi, which had halted production in March last year due to the pandemic.
Playing the best friend Katy in Marvel’s first Asian-led superhero movie alongside Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), the actress tows the company line and keeps mum on specifics.
"I can say this, there was training."
— TCA
