From an early age, rapper and actress Nora Lum — who goes by Awkwafina professionally — knew what it was like to experience grief and loss. Her mother, who was a South Korean immigrant, died when Nora was 4. The Queens native was subsequently raised mostly by her Chinese American father and his mother, her paternal grandmother. Through that relationship in particular, she also learned how precious a grandmother can be.

Which is probably part of why Lum is so natural as Billi in The Farewell, her first dramatic role and one that has been highly lauded as a breakout since the film’s Sundance premiere in January. She’s been in successful movies before; last summer, she stole the show in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians. But playing Billi, a character based on writer and director Lulu Wang, required a whole different set of skills.

Related The Farewell is a stunning leading role debut for Awkwafina

Billi is a Chinese American young woman who moved with her parents to New York City when she was 6 but returns to China with her parents when her paternal grandmother is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The catch: Her grandmother (whom she calls Nai Nai) doesn’t know about the diagnosis, and in keeping with Chinese tradition, the family isn’t telling her either. The film is often funny, but also deeply moving and emotional, as the family — especially Billi — try to grapple with their grief without letting Nai Nai know what’s happening.

I met Lum (who is credited in the movie as Awkwafina but introduced herself to me as Nora) in New York to talk about the challenges of the role — like having to learn Chinese for it — as well as our own experiences with losing a parent and the comedy that can arise from grief. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Alissa Wilkinson

The Farewell is based on something that happened in director Lulu Wang’s life. But how much of it dovetails with your own?

Awkwafina

The cool thing about working with Lulu — and also knowing that Billi is a portrait of who Lulu is — is that she was never possessive of the character. She never was like, “Study up.” It never became that.

Billi also wasn’t entirely me. My grandma has said of my past performances, “It’s just you. It’s like you’re not even acting.” But Billi is different, is a vehicle. She’s a vessel for the Asian American experience, and she’s very neutral. I think that that makes her relatable.

Alissa Wilkinson

Were there particular things about the character that felt familiar to you?

Awkwafina

Oh, yeah. I think things like her kind of childish idealism, and what we’d both been taught is right, and how what you do reflects on your loved ones. When you lose a loved one, you’re thrown into a sense of panic, and having to suppress that in front of relatives that you haven’t seen in a long time — all of that.

Also, I think often Asian Americans didn’t have the same kind of upbringing as their non-Asian classmates. So there will always be a little bit of resentment toward people who grew up differently. I think that was reflected in Billi.

Alissa Wilkinson

I think that’s really striking about her character: She seems like a fish both in water and out of it.

Awkwafina

Yeah, exactly.

Alissa Wilkinson

I know one thing that struck me — as a person who doesn’t speak Chinese — was a moment where they started talking about Billi’s Chinese, and how it’s elementary, and she has an accent. To that point, of course, I had no idea. I was like, It sounds fine to me!

Awkwafina

Thank you!

Alissa Wilkinson

I mean, that might not be quite the compliment you’d like, since I have no idea what “good” Chinese is supposed to sound like.

Awkwafina

My self-esteem went up.

Alissa Wilkinson

And that’s not your native language — what was it like for you trying to speak Chinese in the role?

Awkwafina

I didn’t grow up in a Chinese-speaking household. It was one thing that made me a little nervous about the role. Lulu’s incredible at Mandarin. She hasn’t lived [in China] in a long time, but her accent is impeccable. She didn’t have the same woes as Billi had.

When I got the script, I wanted ... I needed to do this movie. I didn’t care if it was drama, I didn’t care what it was — it felt like it just came to me in an auspicious way. So I studied really hard. Six-hour days of just drilling it in, getting the accent right. It meant that much to me. I really wanted to work for a character like that.

I’m still insecure about [my Chinese].

Alissa Wilkinson

Billi is supposed to have left China as a child, so her level of language mastery makes sense.

Awkwafina

Yeah. That was something that we actually had to change about her from how she was written [so I could play her]. I think that it was good, because a lot of Asian American kids have that level of the language — just a conversational level, but the vocabulary isn’t there.

Alissa Wilkinson

How exactly do you learn a language for a role like this? Do you just work with a teacher? Do you watch movies?

Awkwafina

I worked with a teacher. I found a girl who was an international student at the New School [in New York City]. It was a little side job for her, though I don’t think that she realizes what it was for. I should write to her, because she should see it, I think.

I studied a lot. You don’t want someone coming up to you and whispering the line to you, and then you just echo it. You have to know not only what you’re saying, but you have to know the verb, and what “I” means, and what this new word here means ... I had to know what I was saying, structurally. So that’s what I was studying: vocabulary, but also just talking, because I don’t think that she was supposed to talk well. I was a little embarrassed.

Alissa Wilkinson

Of course, playing this role required a lot more than studying the language. It’s really emotional, but all of that emotion is below the surface, because everyone’s trying to act like everything is okay for Nai Nai’s sake. How did you get there, as a performer?

Awkwafina

It felt like a giant trick that Lulu played on us. There’s one line in the movie, about how Chinese people have a saying: When you get cancer, you die. When we were delivering it — me, Tzi [Ma] and Diana [Lin, who play Billi’s parents] — as actors, we were on the brink. We were all crying. We were so in it.

Then it gets the biggest laugh in the theater! It’s one of the opening lines, and it gets the biggest laugh. I was sitting with Tzi and Diana when we first watched it, and we were like, “Uh?”

But that’s the thing — the comedy in the film is incredible, because it’s not the kind of comedy that I’m used to doing with my characters. Instead, it’s the kind of comedy where you have to zoom out, see it as a bigger picture. It’s not easy to do that.

Lulu knew this, though. So when we watched it, we were finally like, “Okay. We see what you’re doing.” We played it like it was real. I will say that it was quite the empathy- and sympathy-fest. When I would cry, Diana would be off camera, crying. That was the kind of atmosphere that it was.

And we took it very seriously, because Lulu’s family was there. It was really cool for Tzi and Diana to literally study their characters, based on people who were there on set, living and breathing. Lulu’s grandma was there. She would come to set. We couldn’t tell her what the movie was about. It then became our burden as well, because we cared for her too.

Alissa Wilkinson

Yeah. It’s fictionalized, but it’s also real.

Awkwafina

It could’ve been a documentary, dude.

Lulu’s grandma is an incredible person. She’s struggling, but even in her condition, she’s full of life and caring. She would cook for the whole crew if she could. She was really amazing to be around.

Alissa Wilkinson

Speaking of: There is a lot of food in this film. A lot of the scenes revolve around meals.

Awkwafina

Oh, yeah. I always like it when people get that. I’ve never seen food portrayed so coldly, especially Asian food. You never see Asian food portrayed like it’s the last thing you ever want to eat.

But Lulu said that this food, in these circumstances [of grief] — you can’t eat it. You don’t want to eat it. How can you sit down to a joyous meal like that?

Alissa Wilkinson

When you’re feeling this huge heartache.

Awkwafina

For sure.

Alissa Wilkinson

Did playing Billi, navigating that heartache while playing a character, make you discover anything about yourself?

Awkwafina

Oh, yeah. It was a full-body experience. It’s a unique experience, to leave America and go to where you are “from.” Your whole life, you’re being told that you don’t belong here [in America]. Then you go there [to China] and really realize that you don’t belong there. But then you think about how this is your history too, and you can’t forget that part about yourself. That’s what happened to me.

Also, it brought me into a point where I had to confront potentially losing my grandma, and really what that means, and how people are supposed to deal with it. A lot of those questions came to me. It’s a very universal story. People will find their way to connect to it.

Alissa Wilkinson

Everyone loses someone.

Awkwafina

Exactly. Nearly everyone has that as well. Everyone knows what that love is like — a grandma’s love. It’s very, very special.

Alissa Wilkinson

It’s quite beautiful. I lost my dad over 10 years ago ...

Awkwafina

Really? I’m sorry. How old were you?

Alissa Wilkinson

I was 22. It was sad, of course, but I also remember there being lots of moments of weird levity or comedy. Funny things happen when you’re grieving. Funny memories, or funny stories people remember about the person who died.

Awkwafina

I know exactly what you’re talking about. That’s what they say: It’s whoever passes on who is at peace. It’s the people left behind who feel pain.

When you want to think about someone, you want to think about them at their best. That’s sometimes where the comedy comes in. When my mom passed, after the funeral, after all the tears, everyone was in my apartment, and my whole family got into a conversation about our memories of her. Good memories. We were all cracking up laughing. And my neighbor came to drop off a casserole and opened the door, and my dad was laughing. Everyone around me was laughing.

I’m sorry about your dad.

Alissa Wilkinson

Thank you. You know what it’s like to lose a parent, and how it’s painful and ridiculous.

Awkwafina

One thing that eventually becomes frustrating is how people react to that grief. Because we’ve found our peace with it, but people often don’t know how to respond to us. You don’t understand how to explain that peace you feel, once you get there.

Honestly, it helps to talk to people like us — other people who’ve been there.

Alissa Wilkinson

It really does.

Awkwafina

It’s very therapeutic.

Alissa Wilkinson

Just to know that absurd situation, where someone’s there and then suddenly they’re gone.

Awkwafina

Yeah. And for children, it’s a scar that you always wear, because that’s something that will always have an effect on your life. It’s not easy.

Alissa Wilkinson

Yes. That’s really right.

I want to switch gears a little and ask you about one big thread in this movie: that Billi lives between two identities. I know that’s something you’ve talked about in the past — how you have a stage identity as Awkwafina and a personal identity as Nora Lum. And even this performance is really different from other roles you’ve played.

Awkwafina

For sure.

Alissa Wilkinson

What’s it like to live in the tension between your professional and personal identities, and to play this dramatic role?

Awkwafina

I think I was scared about crying. I was scared about drama, but I think what I really was scared about was, I went through my own hardships, and I think I really shunned a lot of those feelings [of grief] at a very young age. That’s why I’ve developed comedy as this kind of guard.

What Lulu taught me was that to not rely on that muscle means to be present, to be still, and also to be vulnerable. I think that’s one of the hardest things. It’s really easy to pop a water balloon in your face and get some laughs. That’s what I grew up doing. To really be vulnerable and confront these things in a way that I never really have — that was something that I grappled with as a performer. It was very real for me.

I know a lot of comedians whose comedy, their sense of humor, is a symptom of adversity that they experienced as children. It also allows them to understand darkness. I think that’s where I pulled from too.

Alissa Wilkinson

It also seems like it would be hard to be vulnerable in the middle of a bunch of people who you don’t really know.

Awkwafina

Right, and not only the cast. In the scene where I’m saying goodbye to Nai Nai [in the apartment building’s courtyard], we had a whole group of hecklers who were poking fun, making noise.

Alissa Wilkinson

Locals?

Awkwafina

Locals. Just locals coming out. It was dusk.

Then I looked around after and they were all crying. I was like, “Just a second ago, you were making fun, now you’re crying?”

Alissa Wilkinson

That whole apartment complex where Billi’s grandmother lived was so interesting — I feel like I’ve seen a lot of films set in various parts of China, but this one almost felt like it could have just been shot in Queens.

Awkwafina

Right! Changchun has a great history. It’s not a major city. We were at the wedding halls where their real wedding took place. We went to Lulu’s real grandpa’s grave. It was real. Our location for Nai Nai’s apartment was so close to Lulu’s real grandma’s apartment. It came to life.

Alissa Wilkinson

Yeah. A copy of reality, in the movie. And now you’re a doppelgänger too.

Awkwafina

It was a full-body experience.

Alissa Wilkinson

And both a dramatic and a funny one, too.

Awkwafina

If you can see the humor in it, then you’re seeing it the right way.

The Farewell opened in theaters on July 13.