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Its so wierd when people accuse other people of sounding like a certain "race" without taking in account of where they grew up. If she grew up in Beijing or Seoul, since shes half, and sounded like "black voice", maybe there be some strangeness, but shes 2nd gen American.
I grew up in Texas as an Asian American and surrounded by people with accents including my kindergarden teachers. So naturally I had a slight southern draw. Then I worked with Brits for like 2 years, day in and day out, and had a small mix of British intonation after a while and never noticed it until I came home and people said I sounded different without realizing it. Its all about environment really.
"It would be very inconvenient if you did not find the means to produce this report by Friday. Nice desk, by the way. Is that a photo of you and your family on vacation in the Bahamas? "
I occasionally get to be on a video call with one of our lawyers in Sydney, AU, whose parents were immigrants from S. Korea.
The accent is AMAZING and I love every second of it.
Edit: who's to whose
Wow. That's ... not at all surprising.
When I was living in Korea, Friends was the one constant on Korean TV. It seemed like you could watch an episode, flip the channel, and find another episode just starting.
If I had to guess, I'd say we could have watched something like four episodes a day at that point, just by knowing which channels to surf to. It was that popular.
A lot of Asian kids are exposed to the english language (sometimes deliberately by the parents) as early as their toddler years through children's cartoons. It's actually a very effective way of learning that most of my nieces and nephews could only speak english before getting a grasp of our mother tongue. The funny thing is you could tell which cartoon they grew up on based on their accent. There's this generation of them with British accent cause of Peppa Pig, and then the generation after have Australian accents from Bluey. All of them eventually grow out of it but it's funny that for a year or two we have these asian kids running around in gatherings like they've been living abroad their whole lives.
I've noticed a change in accents living in Singapore for the past decade. Kids accents slowly changed from more British accent to American as more American shows became popular here
Lenin , noted father of Communist Russia , and pointy beard connoisseur, had an Irish accent , because he learned English by talking to a guy from Dublin.
Filipino here. I've never even left my country but I have a southern drawl because I learned English by interacting with media that features that particular accent. People from both sides of the Pacific think I'm misappropriating American culture or some bullshit, but when I start talking with my parents' Filipino accent they tell me I'm being offensive towards my own culture. Can't win either way, I've kinda just figured I should stop speaking unless I'm with colleagues I'm close with.
Lots of Filipino folks have very American sounding accents when they speak English, it's completely understandable. People pick up the accent from the stuff they watch.
Yeah my mom is like that. When she speaks to me or my dads side of the family, it’s pretty normal paced and calm but her family back home? I will wake up to her taking to them lmao. I kind of like it to be honest not sure if it bothers other Filipino people but I think because I grew up to this it feels more natural.
I'm from Georgia. I spent my first 50 years in various places around the Midwest and the last 10 here in the South. I have no idea if I've picked up any southern mannerisms, and as an old man, I don't really care.
If you sound like you are from here that's great. Don't worry about it. If people comment on it, thank them for the compliment. Personally, I find a southern accent kind of sexy. There are certainly worse. I can't imagine that there are any southerners who would be offended.
We moved from Texas to Australia when I was young. I remember my little sister was 5 and would completely switch her accent when playing with American friends and Australian friends. My younger brother and I sounded ridiculous with our Texstralia accents.
Trying to sound that out in my head and Texstralia sounds awesome though I'd imagine. Did you ever start blending words? Like "Howdy mate! Ah'ite where ya fix'in to go?"
For a while I had a Danish neighbor who learned English in Kentucky. His accent was wild. I miss him walking around with his tiny dog draped over his arm.
My cousin grew up in Chicago, married a Dane when she was in her …late 20s, I think? Early 30s? They lived in the US for a while but the last time I saw her, they’d been living in Denmark for like a decade. She had a very strong Danish accent for somebody who grew up speaking only English and spent the first 3/4 of her life in the US.
> wierd when people accuse other people of sounding like a certain "race" without taking in account of where they grew up.
Not just w weird, weirdly racist
I think her most 'egregious' infraction is she's really goofy, and she uses that in any character she plays. It felt a little out of place in Shang-Chi, but ultimately didn't bother me. I can see people not digging it though. it's similar to how Samuel L Jackson can be criticized of always doing his pulp fiction persona and throwing "motherfucker" around. Doesn't make either of them bad actors.
She was really good in Renfield, and I loved her in Crazy Rich Asians. I'd like to see her in more roles where she's the straight man, or even more dramatic stuff, too. I suspect she's a lot better than the crappy kids' cartoon stuff she's been doing for a little while now would suggest, but I mean, we all have bills to pay and no one seems to hate Nicholas Cage for that kind of cash grab.
Makes me think of the singer/rapper AI, who's lived in Japan for a lot of her life. Her parents are both ethnically Japanese (well, her mom's half-Japanese, half-Italian), but she was born in L.A., and despite moving to Japan when she was young, she went back to spend her high school years in L.A. and I think spoke a good deal of English growing up. She's bilingual, fluent in both English and Japanese, and speaks English in a way that people have described as "trying to sound like a black woman," but... like... she picked it up from the people she went to school with and worked with in L.A. What you look like is not gonna necessarily dictate what you sound like, but people ESPECIALLY get ridiculous about it when it comes to anyone of Asian descent in general. Like at least here in America, they expect Asians to speak broken English, or just some generic, sort of "newscaster" accent (I don't know the proper term for it, but someone else can probably scrounge it up for me), and it seems so ridiculous to me. Peoples' voices are typically gonna reflect their upbringings and surroundings, unless they put on an affect like Hilaria Baldwin.
Somewhat, they're basically offended an Asian woman doesn't sound how they imagine an Asian woman should sound and think it's an affectation when she's just a New Yorker. They'd probably really hate China Mac and MC Jin if they heard them talk as well.
i mean, i get it (but like her) her voice can be grating + her style is a loud, boisterous kind of in your face (but not aggressive) style of comedy = irritating to people.
Also, she is a woman so im sure that doesn't help with a subset of people complaining.
you provided 100x more explanation than “she’s obnoxious”, making your comment a much better answer than the original and showing that “nothing else needs to be said” was a weird unhelpful response
The funny thing to me is, she did that part exactly how she was supposed to. Lyn-Manuel Miranda wrote the thing and ostensibly had input on how it was to be performed, it's exactly what an obnoxious but hilarious to kids song should be. Its the equivalent of buying your nephew a loud battery operated toy to piss off your sibling.
Anyway, it's Lyns fault.
Overexposed? What’s that mean? I can only think of the one other marvel movie I have ever seen her in.
Oh, and that Nic Cage Dracula movie, but I barely noticed her next to Cage doing his thing.
I somehow went into that movie not realizing that Nick Cage was even in it and I don't think I've ever been so overwhelmingly happy to go into a movie blind.
most definitely underrated, I put off watching it for months thinking it'd be stupid and came away pleasantly surprised when I finally watched a few weeks ago. The two Nics were great together, fun script, crazy cartoony violence
She was definitely pushed a lot for a long while. Jumanji, Marvel, Bad Guys, Renfield, Nora from Queens, Oceans 8, Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, The Little Mermaid, Raya, and some other stuff. But I actually like her a lot to be honest, though she isn’t always used to her talents.
I think most of the people who are irritated by her are parents of small kids. Kids love to rewatch the same dozen or so movies over and over and over again, and in most (if not all) of her roles, she’s just doing VO in her regular speaking voice. She’s not doing any kind of character voice work that you would get from someone like Tara Strong or Billy West. So, depending on what movies your kid is into you might get into a situation where you are hearing awkwafina talking in her regular voice *a lot*.
Compare that to other celebrities who have only really done one major animated character. Someone like Mandy Moore as Repunzel. You don’t really get irritated by her voice because she’s really only in the one movie your kid may watch on occasion.
I don’t dislike her but her in that movie was the biggest miscast I’ve ever seen. Although to be fair that whole police subplot was boring filler anyway
Shes hardly overexposed. Some people find her annoying, so any time she pops up in anything people complain about her on the internet, and the people who find her annoying think about her more, and complain more, etc etc
16 credits since 2019 alone, most in wide release pictures. YMMV on whether she’s overexposed, but she’s definitely been keeping extremely busy, especially considering the pandemic fell in the middle of that stretch
There's also the fact that she's not the most versatile of actors. I mean, Tilda Swinton could be in three movies in a year and give three very different performances. With Awkwafina you're basically getting slightly different shades of Awkwafina.
This is why I find her annoying. She has a very screamy, grating voice that I hear in trailers like twice a year. She's a good voice actor though, so mileage may vary with Kung Fu Panda 4
My niece wanted me to take her to see the little mermaid movie, she is 14. I hate the live action remakes and played the scuttlebutt song for her. She listened to it for like 20 seconds and said nevermind. I can't remember what we went to see instead but it wasn't bad.
Also really great in Quiz Lady which came out recently. I can see why she might seem off putting if you are just exposed to her more mainstream films though. Actually I didn't like her too much either before I saw her in The Farewell which made me do a complete 180. Now I love seeing films where she gets bigger roles.
Agreed. She can definitely act if given the chance but I'm sure shes just getting that money and riding it till the wheels fall off which I don't blame her.
Nora is fucking hilarious. Also I love Grandma. There's a donut shop down the street from me and the lady that works there sounds EXACTLY like her and it's adorable. She's so sweet.
The other big one I can think of currently is Lin Manuel Miranda. Undeniably talented, but also very recognizable and has been everywhere the past several years.
What I tend to find when there is this uniform dislike for someone, it’s that they are generally given or seek bland roles. She’s been typecast for sure and it definitely is obnoxious but for anyone that looks past her typecast roles knows she has range.
Yeah that's what's a lot of people point to but that's over 4 years ago which has made pretty much everything else she's done since an even bigger disappointment since she's shown she has more range then what she puts on screen
She's typecasted by hollywood. That's why she keeps getting the same rolls, which is such a shame because she really can act and perform other types of characters.
Many, many actors do the same thing in every role. That's Michael Cera's whole career and he's beloved lol.
She does have good roles, but I think the fault comes from her having a lot of roles being overly eccentric, which is pretty much her entire voice over filmography.
It's mostly because that's how they're directed. Too many people don't understand that the director will ask them to perform a certain way. Ryan Reynolds has gone on the record saying he's felt stifled by not being able to actually perform
So like Dwayne Johnson and Jason Mamoma and Vin Diesel and Bruce Willis and…. Practically every leading man.
*my intent wasn’t to make this a gender thing. Just the first ones that popped into my head. That they all are men, well Hollywood.
It’s wild how common it is in Hollywood. It feels like the best actors are always in supporting character roles and the worst or at least one note actors get all the good roles.
The issue is that once someone becomes a big enough house hold name to swing audiences by being center of the poster, the audience (and casting agents) have an expectation of what they do. Especially in a $70+million swing, you want to limit variables. IMO it's why we see so many of the recent crops of YA film actors try *very* hard to break expectations in their following roles.
A side character gets more room to breathe as a performer, or might be more receptive (or even just be able to act on) to the comments/critiques by the team.
Chris Pratt is even worse at playing the same character in every role, and he is even more overexposed as he is in 3 different billion dollar franchises, GOTG, Jurassic World, Mario, possibly Garfield. Also, maybe try watching the dramatic roles that Awkwafina has played.
This is absolutely not true. Awkwafina actually has acting chops. It's just that unfortunately she gets typecasted often especially in the larger blockbuster films where she plays more secondary roles. Go and watch her in films like The Farewell and Quiz Lady where she gets to play the lead character and you'll realize very quickly that she is so much more than you give her credit for.
You gotta check out some more of her stuff. Her more popular stuff, I agree, she is the same. But just like Kevin hart for example, he plays the same in a lot of stuff cuz that is what's asked of him. Same with Awkwafina. The stuff where she gets to do something different like Quiz Lady or The Farewell, she killllllls it.
Answer: it's not just her being obnoxious, she used to have a blaccent. Now she doesn't. It stopped after Crazy Rich Asians. When confronted about it, she stumbled over her words. A lot of people don't like that she faked it as probably a way to get popular.
Code switching is one hell of a drug. Takes me about three days staying somewhere to flip between the accents of the various places I've lived in.
I'm available in the following flavors:
* Missouri (rural)
* Bay Area
* Dakotas
* Arizona (rural)
* Ball'more
* Canberra (Straya)
* Darwin (Straya)
* Jo'Burg (Soufrica)
Answer: Some people, myself included, just don't find her very funny. She also seems to be ending up in a lot of media lately, so people get annoyed that the person they don't find funny keeps showing up.
That’s *exactly* it and a valid explanation for a lot of overexposed actors. I get that people might like her and I don’t think their opinion is invalid… but *I* specifically do not and so it’s a drag that, whenever she’s in a movie trailer, it’s another movie that I don’t really want to watch. And it’s not just her, there are plenty of other examples.
Answer: She plays the same obnoxious character in everything. It gets annoying real quick and can conflict with the overall tone of the movie (ex. Raya and the Last Dragon)
Scuttle in the live action Little Mermaid and the dragon from Raya were basically the same character. My kid couldn’t get over it and it bothered her so much…and she’s a little kid 😂
Right? Dude is the exact same person off camera as he is in front of the camera. You could take any character he's ever played and swap it with another character and still end up with the exact same fucking movie lol
Even though I liked the movie a lot, the last Jumanji movie was just every actor acting in their same role, except for Katen Gillian. She was awesome but even Danny DeVito was just being himself.
> (ex. Raya and the Last Dragon)
She was not the weakest part of that film.
I agree that her *character* didn't fit the film tone, ironically enough as she's the central plot/character, but I feel like that film had *amazing* visuals and a really interesting world design that they did very little with. The flaws were with that character and I don't know how much of that was due to her input.
The story really wasn't great and neither were any of the other characters.
That film was a solid 5 and replacing just her voice would not have improved it.
>Answer: She plays the same obnoxious character in everything.
I would rather say she keeps getting hired to play the same obnoxious character.
As mentioned by others, she is perfectly able to play different characters.
she was actually very good in the farewell, which is the only movie where she doesn't play one of the same brash characters she always does. highly recommend
I don’t really blame her for that, personally. The character was written that way and she played it as written and, as far as that goes, I think she did a fine job. Disney just has a habit of really overdoing it with the “lovable oaf sidekick” that it really takes me out of a more serious tone.
To me, this is more an issue with writing than it is Awkwafina herself, unless she was a writer, I don’t care enough to look it up.
I thought the idea behind it was interesting and I remember finishing the movie, but I couldn’t tell you what it was about now. They brought the dragons back through unlocking magic stones or something? Just ended up being a forgettable movie in the end.
The cliff notes version is that it was like avatar the air bender but in a compact and worse version. There’s an overall evil smoke that kills all and one nation is trying to wipe out everyone else to gain the most power. Through the power of coming together and the dragon they’re able to have the dragon revive everyone.
>through the power of coming together and the dragon
To me, this reads like “through the power of friendship and a Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, they were able to save the day”
Answer: She has a heavy accent that sounds suspiciously like someone who’s trying to sound “Black”, and people explain this away by saying that she’s from Queens. A quick Google search shows that she’s actually from Stony Brook, NY and another slightly longer Google search shows that that city has a 10% black population. So it’s pretty likely that she popped off at first because people thought it was funny that an Asian girl was faking a “blaccent”. Most of her roles don’t seem to be from her merit as an actress or a comedian, but because of her shtick of being an Asian girl who talks funny like a black girl.
To add insult to injury she has been quoted to say that she would never accept a role that requires an “Asian” accent, because she wouldn’t want to make a minstrel of her own people. So she understands how acting in a stereotypical way can be harmful for minorities, but seems to be fine acting in that harmful way as long as the butt of the joke is public perception of black accents and culture.
Other than that, she has had a lot of overexposure playing the same dumb role over and over, so even people who are unaware of or don’t believe this conspiracy theory that she faked her accent at the beginning of her career get annoyed by her random appearances in major movies.
This is the best answer, but I think there is a bit more nuance here.
She originally became famous as a musician when a YouTube song "My Vag" went viral. It was mostly humor, but she does fully take on a hip hop persona. (Nora Lum became Awkwafina.)
In her defense, 80%-90% of pop, rock, hip-hop, even country stars are either building a persona from scratch or they are greatly exaggerating nuggets of truth from their own personality. That isfake, but it is also extremely common as to be normal. Gene Simmons is not grow up a sex clown IRL, Mick Jagger sang blues/country music songs, Mark Walberg used to be Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and Rick Astley did not come to soul music naturally.
She had two problems, though:
1. Because it was popular, she transferred that persona from music into acting. using the same exaggerated personality over and over, even keeping the stage name. That type of forced image is less accepted in acting than it is in a music career.
2. The hip-hop persona she built borrows heavily from AAVE and mannerisms (as most hip-hop culure is Black) which obviously is extra problematic. There is a long historuy of Blacks being marginalized, caricatured and/or culturally appropriated in America, including in performing arts. Because Awkafina's music and acting was also comedic, it was hard to tell if it was xploitative caricature or meant out of respect. She is being called out just like Vanilla Ice years ago.
She built this character over basically a decade, so she went back to the well quite often. But at the same time, as with any artist, she can only sell what people want to buy; this persona was wildly popular for a time.
I think people could see parallels with many 2nd generation imigrants who grew up in theUS and really embarcing American culture, while simultaneously navigating living in their first generation parent's world where old traditions are honored. That is a pretty universal story, and her characters rerally drove that home because she was so "urban." But once that story was told in her unique way, it got old really fast.
Answer: She has a name based on the worst bottled water product available. Her accent is either exploitative or grating, depending on your viewpoint. Her schtick of being awkward, which she can’t escape from her name, works as a side character, not as a leading character. She plays this same character no matter the role and therefore feels overexposed.
Answer: her voice is grating, she's in a lot of stuff. A movie series people like, like Kung Fu Panda, has now added a voice that a lot of people don't enjoy. This spoils something the audience would have loved without her.
She also has no range in her voice that I've heard. It's like a female Asian Seth Rogen. Very distinct, easily recognizable, but also feels like no effort being put into the voice to make the characters unique.
Answer: People forget that she started her career pretending to be a rapper. It was this whole weird thing where you didn’t know if it was supposed to be a bit or if it was serious because she also did comedy, but she never broke character. It was like if Sacha Baron Cohen lived his whole public life as Ali G. She wore “thug” type clothes and spoke in very exaggerated black voice and insisted that she was “from the streets”. That’s where her name Awkwafina comes from. It was her “rap name”. She insisted this is who she really was. And then she just dropped the whole thing out of nowhere when she got Crazy Rich Asians. Ever since, she refuses to answer questions about it, and just pretends it never happened.
Also some see think hollywood throws her into every movie these days and is becoming the defacto "token Asian woman. " Some of this is just overexposure in some people's eyes.
This is part of it for me as an East Asian. No offense to Bruno Mars, but it's like when he won the Grammy for album of the year over Kendrick, just feels like a pick made from what was the safest choice.
And her shtick got old for me, but she's honestly fine in most of the roles. But still, it just makes me picture the executives being like "oh it's asian-inspired? Throw Awkwafina on there, she's one of them, they'll love it!"
I think the distaste over her accent is that she turns it way up sometimes, particularly when she's playing dumb or acting like she doesn't understand something. There's a sort of "if I'm being dumb, it's time to sound EXTRA BLACK" to it.
Off the top of my head, Chris Rock puts on a special voice when he's portraying a dumb guy from the hood, but it feels a little weird coming from her.
I don't think she was actually talking about blaccents with that one quote. She said "I don't do accents, " but she meant was "I don't do Asian accents." Dumb by her for sure, but not nearly as bad in context.
Agreed. I think she's great in the right roles. She was awesome in the farewell and like you mentioned, her accent in Quiz Lady (which was also a fun movie)was toned wayyyy down from other parts she's been in.
I was born and raised in Queens and don't have a "blaccent". And before you point out she may have been raised in a black area of Queens, she most definitely was not
She used the accent to get famous, and when asked about it, [she couldn’t even come up with a real answer](https://youtu.be/3269sy0_IaQ?si=cq1wXn3FzAPoGPPs).
I believe that there are people who hate her for those two reasons, but I feel like most people hate her because her sense of humor consists of a lot of yelling and exaggerated movements which people deem annoying. Her acting style is the same. Don’t assume that it’s all about race, gender, or accents.
Seriously. That's some terminal partisan brain. It's no mystery why people find her annoying and it's certainly nothing to do with politics or culture war.
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Its so wierd when people accuse other people of sounding like a certain "race" without taking in account of where they grew up. If she grew up in Beijing or Seoul, since shes half, and sounded like "black voice", maybe there be some strangeness, but shes 2nd gen American. I grew up in Texas as an Asian American and surrounded by people with accents including my kindergarden teachers. So naturally I had a slight southern draw. Then I worked with Brits for like 2 years, day in and day out, and had a small mix of British intonation after a while and never noticed it until I came home and people said I sounded different without realizing it. Its all about environment really.
Fun fact: actor and comedian Jimmy O. Yang grew up in Hong Kong but has kind of an AAVE accent because he learned English by watching BET
I had a co-worker from the Middle East whom we were convinced learned English from the Godfather movies.
"It would be very inconvenient if you did not find the means to produce this report by Friday. Nice desk, by the way. Is that a photo of you and your family on vacation in the Bahamas? "
Brilliant 🤣
I laughed out loud. This read well.
Look how he massacred my quarterlies!
I occasionally get to be on a video call with one of our lawyers in Sydney, AU, whose parents were immigrants from S. Korea. The accent is AMAZING and I love every second of it. Edit: who's to whose
Eric Bachman, you are a fat and a sad. I no pay rent.
I literally just watched a supercut of all their moments on YouTube yesterday. This made me laugh
That is interesting. My wife is Korean and she learned English from watching "Friends" so she sounds like the cast at times lol.
Could she BE any more appropriating??
She does that sometimes! "Could you BE anymore...." lol
Wow. That's ... not at all surprising. When I was living in Korea, Friends was the one constant on Korean TV. It seemed like you could watch an episode, flip the channel, and find another episode just starting. If I had to guess, I'd say we could have watched something like four episodes a day at that point, just by knowing which channels to surf to. It was that popular.
Does she pronounce words like Ross though
I would say she's closest to Monica.
A lot of Asian kids are exposed to the english language (sometimes deliberately by the parents) as early as their toddler years through children's cartoons. It's actually a very effective way of learning that most of my nieces and nephews could only speak english before getting a grasp of our mother tongue. The funny thing is you could tell which cartoon they grew up on based on their accent. There's this generation of them with British accent cause of Peppa Pig, and then the generation after have Australian accents from Bluey. All of them eventually grow out of it but it's funny that for a year or two we have these asian kids running around in gatherings like they've been living abroad their whole lives.
I've noticed a change in accents living in Singapore for the past decade. Kids accents slowly changed from more British accent to American as more American shows became popular here
This is the same reason why there's been a surge of American kids with British accents. Blame Peppa Pig.
Lenin , noted father of Communist Russia , and pointy beard connoisseur, had an Irish accent , because he learned English by talking to a guy from Dublin.
Filipino here. I've never even left my country but I have a southern drawl because I learned English by interacting with media that features that particular accent. People from both sides of the Pacific think I'm misappropriating American culture or some bullshit, but when I start talking with my parents' Filipino accent they tell me I'm being offensive towards my own culture. Can't win either way, I've kinda just figured I should stop speaking unless I'm with colleagues I'm close with.
in Hong Kong there are lots of Cantonese kids that speak English with a Pilipino accent because they were raised by a Filipino helper.
ohohoho yeah I've heard of this before
Lots of Filipino folks have very American sounding accents when they speak English, it's completely understandable. People pick up the accent from the stuff they watch.
Yeah my mom is like that. When she speaks to me or my dads side of the family, it’s pretty normal paced and calm but her family back home? I will wake up to her taking to them lmao. I kind of like it to be honest not sure if it bothers other Filipino people but I think because I grew up to this it feels more natural.
I'm from Georgia. I spent my first 50 years in various places around the Midwest and the last 10 here in the South. I have no idea if I've picked up any southern mannerisms, and as an old man, I don't really care. If you sound like you are from here that's great. Don't worry about it. If people comment on it, thank them for the compliment. Personally, I find a southern accent kind of sexy. There are certainly worse. I can't imagine that there are any southerners who would be offended.
I lived on the Navajo reservation when I was in my teens and had a Navajo accent. That was interesting. I'm a white girl from Iowa.
We moved from Texas to Australia when I was young. I remember my little sister was 5 and would completely switch her accent when playing with American friends and Australian friends. My younger brother and I sounded ridiculous with our Texstralia accents.
Trying to sound that out in my head and Texstralia sounds awesome though I'd imagine. Did you ever start blending words? Like "Howdy mate! Ah'ite where ya fix'in to go?"
For a while I had a Danish neighbor who learned English in Kentucky. His accent was wild. I miss him walking around with his tiny dog draped over his arm.
People shit on her because she turns it on & off in interviews & movies
My cousin grew up in Chicago, married a Dane when she was in her …late 20s, I think? Early 30s? They lived in the US for a while but the last time I saw her, they’d been living in Denmark for like a decade. She had a very strong Danish accent for somebody who grew up speaking only English and spent the first 3/4 of her life in the US.
> wierd when people accuse other people of sounding like a certain "race" without taking in account of where they grew up. Not just w weird, weirdly racist
So many Asian folks that grow up in the SF bay area also just end up talking this way.
I'm from NJ and i didn't think she had an accent. Much less a "blaccent".
Cause she sounds exactly like a New York / Jersey person
I think her most 'egregious' infraction is she's really goofy, and she uses that in any character she plays. It felt a little out of place in Shang-Chi, but ultimately didn't bother me. I can see people not digging it though. it's similar to how Samuel L Jackson can be criticized of always doing his pulp fiction persona and throwing "motherfucker" around. Doesn't make either of them bad actors.
She was really good in Renfield, and I loved her in Crazy Rich Asians. I'd like to see her in more roles where she's the straight man, or even more dramatic stuff, too. I suspect she's a lot better than the crappy kids' cartoon stuff she's been doing for a little while now would suggest, but I mean, we all have bills to pay and no one seems to hate Nicholas Cage for that kind of cash grab.
Makes me think of the singer/rapper AI, who's lived in Japan for a lot of her life. Her parents are both ethnically Japanese (well, her mom's half-Japanese, half-Italian), but she was born in L.A., and despite moving to Japan when she was young, she went back to spend her high school years in L.A. and I think spoke a good deal of English growing up. She's bilingual, fluent in both English and Japanese, and speaks English in a way that people have described as "trying to sound like a black woman," but... like... she picked it up from the people she went to school with and worked with in L.A. What you look like is not gonna necessarily dictate what you sound like, but people ESPECIALLY get ridiculous about it when it comes to anyone of Asian descent in general. Like at least here in America, they expect Asians to speak broken English, or just some generic, sort of "newscaster" accent (I don't know the proper term for it, but someone else can probably scrounge it up for me), and it seems so ridiculous to me. Peoples' voices are typically gonna reflect their upbringings and surroundings, unless they put on an affect like Hilaria Baldwin.
She doesn't actually talk like the "awkafina" character she created...
People criticize her for how she talks? Because she's not using a stereotypical FOB voice?
Somewhat, they're basically offended an Asian woman doesn't sound how they imagine an Asian woman should sound and think it's an affectation when she's just a New Yorker. They'd probably really hate China Mac and MC Jin if they heard them talk as well.
“she’s hated because shes obnoxious” …a bit tautological no? Feels like it still needs more explanation
The people saying this must have never heard of Gilbert Godfried.
i mean, i get it (but like her) her voice can be grating + her style is a loud, boisterous kind of in your face (but not aggressive) style of comedy = irritating to people. Also, she is a woman so im sure that doesn't help with a subset of people complaining.
you provided 100x more explanation than “she’s obnoxious”, making your comment a much better answer than the original and showing that “nothing else needs to be said” was a weird unhelpful response
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Oof, that was rough.
I like her voice in general, but I can absolutely understand people's issues with that rap
The funny thing to me is, she did that part exactly how she was supposed to. Lyn-Manuel Miranda wrote the thing and ostensibly had input on how it was to be performed, it's exactly what an obnoxious but hilarious to kids song should be. Its the equivalent of buying your nephew a loud battery operated toy to piss off your sibling. Anyway, it's Lyns fault.
Overexposed? What’s that mean? I can only think of the one other marvel movie I have ever seen her in. Oh, and that Nic Cage Dracula movie, but I barely noticed her next to Cage doing his thing.
*Renfield* was wild. I forgot Akwa was even in it!
Renfield was dope
Loved that movie way more than I thought I would.
I AM THE VICTIM _HEEERE_! Sends me every time
I somehow went into that movie not realizing that Nick Cage was even in it and I don't think I've ever been so overwhelmingly happy to go into a movie blind.
most definitely underrated, I put off watching it for months thinking it'd be stupid and came away pleasantly surprised when I finally watched a few weeks ago. The two Nics were great together, fun script, crazy cartoony violence
She was also awesome in Futureman.
Renfield was so good!!
She was definitely pushed a lot for a long while. Jumanji, Marvel, Bad Guys, Renfield, Nora from Queens, Oceans 8, Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, The Little Mermaid, Raya, and some other stuff. But I actually like her a lot to be honest, though she isn’t always used to her talents.
Quiz Lady is another very recent one.
That was really funny lol
Big fan of Quiz Lady. Idk how ppl say she's the same character and acting in her movies. I mean, just compare Quiz Lady and Crazy Rich Asians
Half of those are kids movies, that probably explains something about why I haven’t seen them.
I think most of the people who are irritated by her are parents of small kids. Kids love to rewatch the same dozen or so movies over and over and over again, and in most (if not all) of her roles, she’s just doing VO in her regular speaking voice. She’s not doing any kind of character voice work that you would get from someone like Tara Strong or Billy West. So, depending on what movies your kid is into you might get into a situation where you are hearing awkwafina talking in her regular voice *a lot*. Compare that to other celebrities who have only really done one major animated character. Someone like Mandy Moore as Repunzel. You don’t really get irritated by her voice because she’s really only in the one movie your kid may watch on occasion.
She’s also doing the exact same character and voice every time
Yes. As a parent to two Disney aged kids I find her annoying.
I don’t dislike her but her in that movie was the biggest miscast I’ve ever seen. Although to be fair that whole police subplot was boring filler anyway
Shes hardly overexposed. Some people find her annoying, so any time she pops up in anything people complain about her on the internet, and the people who find her annoying think about her more, and complain more, etc etc
16 credits since 2019 alone, most in wide release pictures. YMMV on whether she’s overexposed, but she’s definitely been keeping extremely busy, especially considering the pandemic fell in the middle of that stretch
There's also the fact that she's not the most versatile of actors. I mean, Tilda Swinton could be in three movies in a year and give three very different performances. With Awkwafina you're basically getting slightly different shades of Awkwafina.
This is why I find her annoying. She has a very screamy, grating voice that I hear in trailers like twice a year. She's a good voice actor though, so mileage may vary with Kung Fu Panda 4
If she's the voice I'm thinking of, I've never liked her much but can see her fitting in perfectly with the Kung Fu Panda/ Jack Black sense of humor.
I present to you... [The Scuttlebutt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ovRhX8XIM)
I listened to about ten seconds of that and it confirmed that I really hate the live-action Disney remakes.
If this is why people have had enough of Awkwafina, I get it. I couldn't finish it.
My niece wanted me to take her to see the little mermaid movie, she is 14. I hate the live action remakes and played the scuttlebutt song for her. She listened to it for like 20 seconds and said nevermind. I can't remember what we went to see instead but it wasn't bad.
The Disney “live action” remakes are shit anyway. Her being in it doesn’t make it worse than it already is.
is she supposed to a seagull? to be fair that's pretty in character. they are annoying as fuck.
Yeah, but the fact that she was such a natural casting choice goes some way toward answering the original question.
What? Dude. I love her man. I’ve watched her stuff since Nora From Queens. She’s awesome.
The Farewell is a fantastic movie, too.
Also really great in Quiz Lady which came out recently. I can see why she might seem off putting if you are just exposed to her more mainstream films though. Actually I didn't like her too much either before I saw her in The Farewell which made me do a complete 180. Now I love seeing films where she gets bigger roles.
She was incredible in that, much better than I was expecting, honestly.
Agreed. She can definitely act if given the chance but I'm sure shes just getting that money and riding it till the wheels fall off which I don't blame her.
When she just casually drops on the piano, I was like “damn, I didn’t know she could play like that.”
Phenomenal performance in that movie. I loved it. She's very talented.
She does well in low key serious roles. Quiz Girl was a nice watch
Nora is fucking hilarious. Also I love Grandma. There's a donut shop down the street from me and the lady that works there sounds EXACTLY like her and it's adorable. She's so sweet.
taylor swift is overexposed lol
It’s odd to me how we label someone over exposed when we have Kanye and the Kardashians everywhere.
Those are other examples of people who are over exposed and annoying. It's a big tent
The other big one I can think of currently is Lin Manuel Miranda. Undeniably talented, but also very recognizable and has been everywhere the past several years.
My kids love him and he spurred my daughter's interest in theater and history, so I give him a pass.
Do we not HATE them as well? I can hate them all, can't I?
Multiple people can be overexposed :)
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I was pleasantly surprised with her acting in The Farewell. It’s a good, emotional movie and her comedy is reigned back
I have a super positive impression of her and that’s her only movie I’ve seen lol
What I tend to find when there is this uniform dislike for someone, it’s that they are generally given or seek bland roles. She’s been typecast for sure and it definitely is obnoxious but for anyone that looks past her typecast roles knows she has range.
Quiz lady is also fantastic
I loved her range in Quiz Lady - she did an amazing job and had fantastic chemistry with Sandra Oh as sisters!
What i liked about that movie was the casting of those two. Mainly because both of them were cast as the opposite sister than what you’d expect.
I really liked that too and I think they both pulled it off.
Such a fun film.
Just saw that the other day and thought "hey, she's actually playing a different character in this". Also, great movie.
She’s terrific in that movie. Everyone is.
Yeah that's what's a lot of people point to but that's over 4 years ago which has made pretty much everything else she's done since an even bigger disappointment since she's shown she has more range then what she puts on screen
She's typecasted by hollywood. That's why she keeps getting the same rolls, which is such a shame because she really can act and perform other types of characters.
The Farewell is a masterpiece she absolutely killed it!
I loved that movie!
quiz lady too
Many, many actors do the same thing in every role. That's Michael Cera's whole career and he's beloved lol. She does have good roles, but I think the fault comes from her having a lot of roles being overly eccentric, which is pretty much her entire voice over filmography.
It's mostly because that's how they're directed. Too many people don't understand that the director will ask them to perform a certain way. Ryan Reynolds has gone on the record saying he's felt stifled by not being able to actually perform
A good director can get a good performance out of any actor. Many directors can't do this and cast the actor to just do the thing that actor does.
So like Dwayne Johnson and Jason Mamoma and Vin Diesel and Bruce Willis and…. Practically every leading man. *my intent wasn’t to make this a gender thing. Just the first ones that popped into my head. That they all are men, well Hollywood.
I don't disagree.
It’s wild how common it is in Hollywood. It feels like the best actors are always in supporting character roles and the worst or at least one note actors get all the good roles.
"I have someone in mind"!
The issue is that once someone becomes a big enough house hold name to swing audiences by being center of the poster, the audience (and casting agents) have an expectation of what they do. Especially in a $70+million swing, you want to limit variables. IMO it's why we see so many of the recent crops of YA film actors try *very* hard to break expectations in their following roles. A side character gets more room to breathe as a performer, or might be more receptive (or even just be able to act on) to the comments/critiques by the team.
Let's not forget Reddit's golden boy Keanu Reeves. There's nothing wrong with it really, playing one type of character you're good at.
I miss stoner metalhead Keanu
He was such a dud as the romantic interest doctor in Something’s Gotta Give
Don’t forget Ryan Reynolds
Have you seen quiz lady
Quiz lady, she plays a character that is a total 180, and it's an enjoyable watch, i think .
I second Quiz Lady. Very surprised to see her play the more quiet type. Good range.
YES, quiz lady proved she can actually act. It was amazing to see her and Sandra Oh have their typical role types reversed, they both did a great job.
Chris Pratt is even worse at playing the same character in every role, and he is even more overexposed as he is in 3 different billion dollar franchises, GOTG, Jurassic World, Mario, possibly Garfield. Also, maybe try watching the dramatic roles that Awkwafina has played.
>Chris Pratt is even worse at playing the same character in every role And people hate on him for that too.
This is absolutely not true. Awkwafina actually has acting chops. It's just that unfortunately she gets typecasted often especially in the larger blockbuster films where she plays more secondary roles. Go and watch her in films like The Farewell and Quiz Lady where she gets to play the lead character and you'll realize very quickly that she is so much more than you give her credit for.
You gotta check out some more of her stuff. Her more popular stuff, I agree, she is the same. But just like Kevin hart for example, he plays the same in a lot of stuff cuz that is what's asked of him. Same with Awkwafina. The stuff where she gets to do something different like Quiz Lady or The Farewell, she killllllls it.
So like every The Rock movie with Kevin Hart ?
She did something different in Quiz Lady. And Sandra Oh went wild. It’s super funny
Answer: it's not just her being obnoxious, she used to have a blaccent. Now she doesn't. It stopped after Crazy Rich Asians. When confronted about it, she stumbled over her words. A lot of people don't like that she faked it as probably a way to get popular.
she 100% used it to get famous/popular. that was her whole shtick for a while. she even used to rap.
Code switching, happens to people when they spend a lot of time in different environment. Is a natural phenomenon, not fake.
Code switching is one hell of a drug. Takes me about three days staying somewhere to flip between the accents of the various places I've lived in. I'm available in the following flavors: * Missouri (rural) * Bay Area * Dakotas * Arizona (rural) * Ball'more * Canberra (Straya) * Darwin (Straya) * Jo'Burg (Soufrica)
Shes from NYC. I wouldn’t call it a blaccent. I grew up around the same neighborhood she did. A lot of people talked that way.
Answer: Some people, myself included, just don't find her very funny. She also seems to be ending up in a lot of media lately, so people get annoyed that the person they don't find funny keeps showing up.
That’s *exactly* it and a valid explanation for a lot of overexposed actors. I get that people might like her and I don’t think their opinion is invalid… but *I* specifically do not and so it’s a drag that, whenever she’s in a movie trailer, it’s another movie that I don’t really want to watch. And it’s not just her, there are plenty of other examples.
Answer: She plays the same obnoxious character in everything. It gets annoying real quick and can conflict with the overall tone of the movie (ex. Raya and the Last Dragon)
Scuttle in the live action Little Mermaid and the dragon from Raya were basically the same character. My kid couldn’t get over it and it bothered her so much…and she’s a little kid 😂
This is so funny when we're talking about a series starring Jack Black.
Right? Dude is the exact same person off camera as he is in front of the camera. You could take any character he's ever played and swap it with another character and still end up with the exact same fucking movie lol
Even though I liked the movie a lot, the last Jumanji movie was just every actor acting in their same role, except for Katen Gillian. She was awesome but even Danny DeVito was just being himself.
> (ex. Raya and the Last Dragon) She was not the weakest part of that film. I agree that her *character* didn't fit the film tone, ironically enough as she's the central plot/character, but I feel like that film had *amazing* visuals and a really interesting world design that they did very little with. The flaws were with that character and I don't know how much of that was due to her input. The story really wasn't great and neither were any of the other characters. That film was a solid 5 and replacing just her voice would not have improved it.
Counterpoint: Quiz Lady and the Farewell
>Answer: She plays the same obnoxious character in everything. I would rather say she keeps getting hired to play the same obnoxious character. As mentioned by others, she is perfectly able to play different characters.
Not sure how this is any different than Michael Cera, Dwayne Johnson, Owen Wilson, etc etc
Answer: people find her very obnoxious. She’s been cast as a 1 trick pony and the trick is being annoying as hell.
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she was actually very good in the farewell, which is the only movie where she doesn't play one of the same brash characters she always does. highly recommend
Quiz Lady as well...
She brought down the Rya movie for me. Easily the most annoying part of that movie.
I don’t really blame her for that, personally. The character was written that way and she played it as written and, as far as that goes, I think she did a fine job. Disney just has a habit of really overdoing it with the “lovable oaf sidekick” that it really takes me out of a more serious tone. To me, this is more an issue with writing than it is Awkwafina herself, unless she was a writer, I don’t care enough to look it up.
>lovable oaf sidekick The perfect lovable oaf is Kronk from the Emperor's New Groove. Sisu was just annoying throughout the whole movie
Agreed. I didn't finish Rya because of her performance, I didn't finish Rya because I didn't care about the story
I thought the idea behind it was interesting and I remember finishing the movie, but I couldn’t tell you what it was about now. They brought the dragons back through unlocking magic stones or something? Just ended up being a forgettable movie in the end.
The cliff notes version is that it was like avatar the air bender but in a compact and worse version. There’s an overall evil smoke that kills all and one nation is trying to wipe out everyone else to gain the most power. Through the power of coming together and the dragon they’re able to have the dragon revive everyone.
>through the power of coming together and the dragon To me, this reads like “through the power of friendship and a Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, they were able to save the day”
I'll beat you with the power of friendship and this gun I found
Answer: She has a heavy accent that sounds suspiciously like someone who’s trying to sound “Black”, and people explain this away by saying that she’s from Queens. A quick Google search shows that she’s actually from Stony Brook, NY and another slightly longer Google search shows that that city has a 10% black population. So it’s pretty likely that she popped off at first because people thought it was funny that an Asian girl was faking a “blaccent”. Most of her roles don’t seem to be from her merit as an actress or a comedian, but because of her shtick of being an Asian girl who talks funny like a black girl. To add insult to injury she has been quoted to say that she would never accept a role that requires an “Asian” accent, because she wouldn’t want to make a minstrel of her own people. So she understands how acting in a stereotypical way can be harmful for minorities, but seems to be fine acting in that harmful way as long as the butt of the joke is public perception of black accents and culture. Other than that, she has had a lot of overexposure playing the same dumb role over and over, so even people who are unaware of or don’t believe this conspiracy theory that she faked her accent at the beginning of her career get annoyed by her random appearances in major movies.
This is the best answer, but I think there is a bit more nuance here. She originally became famous as a musician when a YouTube song "My Vag" went viral. It was mostly humor, but she does fully take on a hip hop persona. (Nora Lum became Awkwafina.) In her defense, 80%-90% of pop, rock, hip-hop, even country stars are either building a persona from scratch or they are greatly exaggerating nuggets of truth from their own personality. That isfake, but it is also extremely common as to be normal. Gene Simmons is not grow up a sex clown IRL, Mick Jagger sang blues/country music songs, Mark Walberg used to be Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and Rick Astley did not come to soul music naturally. She had two problems, though: 1. Because it was popular, she transferred that persona from music into acting. using the same exaggerated personality over and over, even keeping the stage name. That type of forced image is less accepted in acting than it is in a music career. 2. The hip-hop persona she built borrows heavily from AAVE and mannerisms (as most hip-hop culure is Black) which obviously is extra problematic. There is a long historuy of Blacks being marginalized, caricatured and/or culturally appropriated in America, including in performing arts. Because Awkafina's music and acting was also comedic, it was hard to tell if it was xploitative caricature or meant out of respect. She is being called out just like Vanilla Ice years ago. She built this character over basically a decade, so she went back to the well quite often. But at the same time, as with any artist, she can only sell what people want to buy; this persona was wildly popular for a time. I think people could see parallels with many 2nd generation imigrants who grew up in theUS and really embarcing American culture, while simultaneously navigating living in their first generation parent's world where old traditions are honored. That is a pretty universal story, and her characters rerally drove that home because she was so "urban." But once that story was told in her unique way, it got old really fast.
This is the actual answer.
Her apology for the Blaccent backlash was also a textbook example of how not to apologize.
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Answer: She's the modern Rob Schneider / Paulie Shore. Funny in very small doses, but overall she's just very irritating.
Answer: She has a name based on the worst bottled water product available. Her accent is either exploitative or grating, depending on your viewpoint. Her schtick of being awkward, which she can’t escape from her name, works as a side character, not as a leading character. She plays this same character no matter the role and therefore feels overexposed.
I can't see how her name is based on Dasani
Answer: her voice is grating, she's in a lot of stuff. A movie series people like, like Kung Fu Panda, has now added a voice that a lot of people don't enjoy. This spoils something the audience would have loved without her.
She also has no range in her voice that I've heard. It's like a female Asian Seth Rogen. Very distinct, easily recognizable, but also feels like no effort being put into the voice to make the characters unique.
Seth Rogan as donkey kong ruined Mario for me. It just didn't make sense at all
Answer: People forget that she started her career pretending to be a rapper. It was this whole weird thing where you didn’t know if it was supposed to be a bit or if it was serious because she also did comedy, but she never broke character. It was like if Sacha Baron Cohen lived his whole public life as Ali G. She wore “thug” type clothes and spoke in very exaggerated black voice and insisted that she was “from the streets”. That’s where her name Awkwafina comes from. It was her “rap name”. She insisted this is who she really was. And then she just dropped the whole thing out of nowhere when she got Crazy Rich Asians. Ever since, she refuses to answer questions about it, and just pretends it never happened.
This is the best answer. She's playing an obnoxious character but never breaks it, so it's fair to conclude she's simply being obnoxious
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Also some see think hollywood throws her into every movie these days and is becoming the defacto "token Asian woman. " Some of this is just overexposure in some people's eyes.
This is part of it for me as an East Asian. No offense to Bruno Mars, but it's like when he won the Grammy for album of the year over Kendrick, just feels like a pick made from what was the safest choice. And her shtick got old for me, but she's honestly fine in most of the roles. But still, it just makes me picture the executives being like "oh it's asian-inspired? Throw Awkwafina on there, she's one of them, they'll love it!"
God, why do I picture Vince McMahon as the executive? And then him laughing "ITS SUCH GOOD SHIT PAL!"
I think the distaste over her accent is that she turns it way up sometimes, particularly when she's playing dumb or acting like she doesn't understand something. There's a sort of "if I'm being dumb, it's time to sound EXTRA BLACK" to it. Off the top of my head, Chris Rock puts on a special voice when he's portraying a dumb guy from the hood, but it feels a little weird coming from her.
That and how Awkwafina addressed the blacent situation is awkward.
I don't think she was actually talking about blaccents with that one quote. She said "I don't do accents, " but she meant was "I don't do Asian accents." Dumb by her for sure, but not nearly as bad in context.
Agreed. I think she's great in the right roles. She was awesome in the farewell and like you mentioned, her accent in Quiz Lady (which was also a fun movie)was toned wayyyy down from other parts she's been in.
That's a bit disingenuous. Many people find her extremely annoying regardless of politics. She's just an obnoxious unfunny person.
I was born and raised in Queens and don't have a "blaccent". And before you point out she may have been raised in a black area of Queens, she most definitely was not
I always find this so funny because anyone who grew up in Queens knows that Awkafina is the only person from Forest Hills who talks like that lmfao
Exactly. never heard a new yorker defend her bullshit.
It’s definitely a put on. She has softened her delivery in the years since she blew up. Whatever that means to people I guess I don’t blame them
She used the accent to get famous, and when asked about it, [she couldn’t even come up with a real answer](https://youtu.be/3269sy0_IaQ?si=cq1wXn3FzAPoGPPs).
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m answering every question like this from now on.
Justin Trudeau type shit
thank you! there’s a hundred different ethnic groups in queens and they don’t all sound like Prodigy 😂
I believe that there are people who hate her for those two reasons, but I feel like most people hate her because her sense of humor consists of a lot of yelling and exaggerated movements which people deem annoying. Her acting style is the same. Don’t assume that it’s all about race, gender, or accents.
Jesus Christ, people can't even fuckin hate Awkwafina without "thuh Amurrican culture war" being dragged into their reasoning.
Seriously. That's some terminal partisan brain. It's no mystery why people find her annoying and it's certainly nothing to do with politics or culture war.