THE RISE AND RISE OF AWKWAFINA
Nora wanted to see SNL because of Lucy Liu. She had become obsessed with the actor after watching Charlie’s Angels a couple of months prior, and was thrilled to hear that Liu would be guest-hosting the live comedy show, the first Asian-American in history to do so. She insisted on being there, to witness history. She lived with her grandmother (her mother had passed away when she was four), but spent weekends with her father, Wally. So she badgered him to take her from the neighbourhood of Forest Hill, Queens onto a subway train, and all the way to Manhattan and 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the show was filmed. The only problem: Nora and Wally didn’t have tickets.
“I didn’t see her, sadly,” says the now 31-year-old, in her low, throaty drawl. “We just went and hung outside the studio, because I knew she was in there, working. My dad wouldn’t let me wait all day. I just wanted to be near the building, I wanted to be near Lucy Liu. To see an Asian-American woman there was really cool, especially for the first time. It was crazy.”
She didn’t even get through the door that time, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Because Nora Lum was about to become Awkwafina.
ON 16 DECEMBER 2000, A 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL NAMED NORALUM WENT TO SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. IT
