Awkwafina

A YouTube rap video about female anatomy got her fired from a publishing job in 2012 and made her an underground sensation simultaneously. She'd been doing rap as a side hustle; 'My Vag' wasn't a career plan, it was a provocation that accidentally worked. Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 put her in front of a global audience, and The Farewell a year later proved she wasn't just comic relief. She took home the Golden Globe for Best Actress, becoming the first person of Asian descent to win a lead film actress category at the Globes.

After The Farewell won her the Golden Globe, the logical next move was more prestige drama. She went the other direction. Voice work, action comedy, animated franchises, producer credits stacking up quietly behind the screen roles. Her public image is still more 'Queens girl who got famous' than 'serious actress,' and she seems comfortable with that calculus. The MCU put her in a franchise and then went quiet, which says more about the franchise than about her.

Her grandmother is the through-line connecting everything. After her mother died of pulmonary hypertension when she was four, her paternal grandmother moved to Queens to help raise her. That relationship runs directly through The Farewell and Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens. Before the rap career, she trained on trumpet and jazz at LaGuardia High School. The raspy voice people grew up mocking is the same one her grandmother told her never to be ashamed of.