via straitstimes.com

On last Sunday night, Awkwafina won a Golden Globe with her performance in The Farewell, as Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy. Her win was historic and made her the first person of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe Award in any lead actress film category. And notably, although The Farewell was categorized as a comedy at the Globes, and although Awkwafina is best known for her last movie Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s Eight, her work in the The Farewell isn’t comic.

Prior to Awkwafina, only a few actors of Asian descent had been nominated in the lead actress musical/comedy movie category. Last year, Constance Wu who was the actress who played the lead character in “Crazy Rich Asians” was nominated in the same category.

Awkwafina seemed choose to follow stars like Melissa McCarthy or Tiffany Haddish as her direction of career: unruly women with a little bit dramatic personality, who built their images by performing the funniest, raunchiest part of extremely funny ranch comedies. Awkwafina’s early career as a YouTuber performing novelty raps like “My Vag” made the song go viral. It wasn’t an immediately obvious choice for an actress to accept a dramatic role in the position. Awkwafina was in after her breakout year of 2018. But she turned her role as the best friend of lead character from Singapore and the only person in the movie who gets to say “fuck” in the movie Crazy Rich Asians’. It seems that Awkwafina would spend the rest of her career as comedy actress.

via nytimes.com

Instead, Awkwafina starred in movie The Farewell, which made her win first Golden Globe. She played a Chinese-American immigrant who struggles with her cultural identity and learns that her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and then has to keep it a secret from her. She studied very hard to play this role, drill it in and get the accent right. She’s now both a dramatic actress and a comic actress.

From her speech, it could be learned that Awkwafina believes she has more to prove herself and explore more possibilities in her acting career.

“It’s pretty mind-blowing,” she said. “It feels incredible. There’s also another feeling that you are going to do more. I hope this is just the beginning.”