{"id":818813,"date":"2026-10-30T16:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818813\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T16:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:00:10","slug":"i-felt-bad-for-my-exes-awkwafina-on-making-deeply-personal-tv-with-her-grandma-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818813\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I felt bad for my exes\u2019: Awkwafina on making deeply personal TV \u2013 with her grandma | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m embarrassed I didn\u2019t bring anything. It\u2019s 10-something in the morning, and I\u2019m meeting Nora Lum, 38 \u2013 best known as rapper, comic actor and writer Awkwafina \u2013 the morning after the Bafta TV awards. I feel that I should have brought her a pastry pick-me-up. Yet here I am empty-handed. \u201cIt could have been Chinese buns,\u201d she playfully\u00a0suggests.<\/p>\n

Yes, it could have been. Especially because we are meeting to discuss her new series on Apple TV, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook. It\u00a0sees the star of box-office hits Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel\u2019s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings travel across the US to learn from a new generation of Asian American chefs, in the hope that she might revive her own family\u2019s long-closed Cantonese restaurant. But there\u2019s one problem: she can\u2019t cook.<\/p>\n

Or so she says. \u201cUnlikely\u201d cook? There\u2019s nothing unlikely about it, I wager. Sure, in the first episode, Lum looks genuinely alarmed by the triple threat of hot oil, high heat and sharp knives in wok cooking. But she does very well. She clearly has a knack for food.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I think it was the easiest knack to develop, because all it really takes is to eat at a ton of restaurants and order food constantly,\u201d she pushes back.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut look, I was raised by immigrant Chinese people \u2013 I did eat all the weird Chinese stuff,\u201d she says, understating her family\u2019s impressive culinary credentials. The full story is thus: back in the 50s, Lum\u2019s great-grandfather Jimmy opened one of New York\u2019s first Chinese-American restaurants in Flushing, Queens. Called Lum\u2019s, it became something of an institution, helping to popularise the Chinese-American food beloved today (think: orange chicken and BBQ ribs).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe restaurant is how we came to this country,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt closed in 1982, so I wasn\u2019t born. But it was so important. The way they talk about it is like a family member that passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n

High steaks \u2026 Awkwafina and Jimmy O Yang (right) with Andrew Samia of Curry Boys BBQ in The Unlikely Cook. Photograph: Christina Belle\/Apple TV<\/p>\n

Lum\u2019s new TV show about it is pleasingly warm and personal, with much of its gentle humour coming less from the supposedly awkward personality that inspired Lum\u2019s stage name than her deep appreciation for food and hospitality. Have you ever seen someone scream \u201cOh my God, not the cilantro!\u201d in ecstatic anticipation of a herb? I have, and it\u2019s charming. But ultimately, Unlikely Cook is a love letter to Lum\u2019s magnetic, occasionally foul-mouthed, paternal grandmother; the woman who raised her when she lost her mother at just four years old.<\/p>\n

Several months after I meet Lum, I see the Instagram post announcing her grandmother\u2019s death. But, for now, I ask about the woman who has loomed so large over her creative work, and regularly steals the show in Unlikely Cook. How easy is it working with your own grandma?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy. I\u2019ve been asking my grandma to be in things since my first [TV] job, which was on MTV\u2019s Girl Code,\u201d Lum explains. Grandma obliged, starring in the brilliantly named episode Bad Sex, Grandparents, Eating Habits.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always a little worried, thinking: \u2018Oh my God, what are you\u00a0going to say?\u2019 But she has such\u00a0a lovely on-camera affect. It\u00a0just kind of clicks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this [project], she\u2019s calling me at all hours of the night, we\u2019re staying up talking. Actually, she called me a week ago and was like, \u2018I\u2019m just thinking about the menu, and we should put a pu\u00a0pu platter \u2013 but we shouldn\u2019t call it pu pu, because, you know, it means shit so we should call it the\u00a0volcano\u00a0platter.\u2019 It\u2019s giving her excitement again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fry hard \u2026 Awkwafina in The Unlikely Cook. Photograph: Christina Belle\/Courtesy of Apple<\/p>\n

Between the family appearances and actor Jimmy O Yang\u2019s star turn (Lum\u2019s real-life best friend) Unlikely Cook may be Lum\u2019s most biographical work yet. Which is saying something given her hit 2020 comedy television show was literally called Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, and starred her as directionless, awkward Nora living in \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Flushing, with her widowed father and boisterous\u00a0grandmother.<\/p>\n

For fans of Nora from Queens, there may be a particular, parasocial joy in watching Unlikely Cook. The sitcom could be absurd (Nora\u2019s grandma accidentally growing cannabis, for instance), but you always sensed some emotional truth beneath it. Now we\u00a0get the real Nora Lum.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my God, yeah,\u201d she exclaims. She refers to an episode where she is stressed. \u201cThat episode was bizarre to watch. Because I have never seen myself be serious, be panicked. That\u2019s never been recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something about it where I actually felt bad. I felt bad for my exes, my friends. I\u00a0was watching myself back like, \u2018Chill\u00a0out, girl!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have her pegged as the self-conscious type, I say, what with working so frequently from her real life. \u201cI\u2019ve never been documentarised in quite this way,\u201d she explains. \u201cThere\u2019s a part of me that\u2019s like, oh my God, you let people see this crazy, unbridled version of you?! I still don\u2019t know how to deal with that. But I do feel that whatever is honest, it can\u2019t be the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be fair, food is emotional stuff, and so often bound up in questions of identity, history and, especially in the immigrant context, family sacrifice. I ask Lum about her observation in the documentary that a generation of elders grafted in restaurants so their kids didn\u2019t have to. They could be lawyers instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that a lot of the [older] people we met didn\u2019t want their children to go back into the restaurant business. For my great-grandpa\u2019s generation, when they came over they were relegated to either laundromats or restaurants, cooking food that has historically been demonised,\u201d Lum says. \u201cBut then again, it\u2019s also something that people love. There are more Chinese restaurants in America than there are McDonald\u2019s, KFC, Burger King, all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while the restaurant business gave Lum\u2019s family life, it also took a lot of it. Her grandmother had her\u00a0own restaurant for a time, but when it failed, Lum\u2019s grandparents were forced to file for bankruptcy, losing both their business and home. For a while, the whole family lived in a one-bedroom apartment.<\/p>\n

All smiles \u2026 Awkwafina. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI think her business failing was really hard on her. She would fold the napkins in the back. She would launder napkins in our home. And she would be the most amazing ma\u00eetre d\u2019 that the whole town knew. I don\u2019t think she ever really recovered from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would opening a permanent Lum\u2019s be a way of rewriting that history?<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think giving back \u2013 if I\u2019m in a\u00a0position to do that \u2013 does feel like\u00a0this full-circle moment where I could still make my family proud in that way. It would definitely be something for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this talk of making family proud and honouring their sacrifices is something I know well, having also been raised in an immigrant household. Did Lum agonise over her choice of a creative career as much as I did when I chose English lit over law \u2013 something I loved over something that might more reliably make good on what my family gave me?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, because I don\u2019t think I was smart enough to get into law school,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I doubt that\u2019s true,\u201d I reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually not a good student. I went to summer school for gym. For gym. If you fail a class during the year, you can make it up over the summer. But it\u2019s like a punishment, right? Every day I was taking two periods of gym, because I had failed so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continues: \u201cDo you know what Earth science is? The rock one? It\u2019s the easy rock one. It\u2019s not even chemistry. I had to take the Earth science [exam] five times, dude.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think my family were just thinking, well, she has nothing to lose. Besides I wasn\u2019t doing it off their dime, so I think maybe they were just happy I was doing something. But my dad really wanted me to be a meat inspector. I\u2019m still on those government job registries that he signed me up for. He\u2019s like, \u201cMeat inspector, that\u2019s a really good\u00a0job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a good job,\u201d I concur.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is! Great entry level salary. And you always, always need a meat inspector,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could start now,\u201d I offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, I know,\u201d she laughs, and I wonder if she has the same idea I have. Awkwafina is the Meat Inspector, coming soon to Apple TV.<\/p>\n

OK, back to business. Watching Unlikely Cook, I couldn\u2019t help thinking about the politics of America right now. After all, a show celebrating the work of immigrants feels significant in the age of Trump and ICE. Was that intentional?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not at all. But if you want to tell the story of Chinese-American food, immigrant culture is something you can\u2019t ignore. It\u2019s also a deep part of our identity as second-generation Asian Americans, it\u2019s part of how we see the world. And it\u2019s a hard thing to see right now in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our time is nearly up. But wait, I\u2019m still not sure, does this mean someday there will be a permanent Lum\u2019s? \u201cIt\u2019s still in the works of being figured out,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But clearly, in Nora Lum herself, something has stuck. \u201cAfter this show, I did start dabbling a little,\u201d she says. While shooting a film in Kentucky, she took to cooking her own breakfast, \u201ca four-egg omelette with spinach and cheese\u201d, she says with faint pride. It\u2019s not quite as impressive as Chinese buns. But maybe they\u2019ll come soon.<\/p>\n

Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook is on\u00a0Apple TV from Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m embarrassed I didn\u2019t bring anything. It\u2019s 10-something in the morning, and I\u2019m meeting Nora Lum, 38 \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}