Awkwafina is Nora From Queens back for second season what advice would cast members have for its

Nora idealises Edmund’s “perfect” life – going to an elite school, working at high-paying tech jobs, living away from home – without realising that he is as unhappy as she is.

Other than Awkwafina and Yang, the new season will also see the return of Lori Tan Chinn (who plays Nora’s grandmother), BD Wong (Wally, Nora’s father), and Jennifer Esposito as Brenda (Wally’s girlfriend). They all agree that their characters on the show, in one way or another, have shaped their own journeys.

Awkwafina, for instance, says she has drawn more from her own perspective in the second season of Nora. “I also addressed a couple of things, like, for instance, the absence of my mum.”

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Offering motherly advice to a younger Awkwafina would be simple, she adds. “I would tell my younger self to not worry as much. I think there’s a world where I wouldn’t tell her anything.

“I think that everything that happened in my life, when I started to figure out who I was and what made me genuinely happy, what fulfilled me, made the things that I used to really not like about my life a little bit easier to digest. That maybe everything happens for a reason.

“I guess I would tell her a combination of, like, ‘It might suck for a little bit, but just bear with me’.”

For her part, Chinn, generations older, says there have been two major women role models in her life, and she draws on the characters of these stoic women in her acting roles, including in Nora.

“All of us, all of our parents and my generation, were match-married. That’s a big difference. Somebody like BD [Wong], a decade later on, maybe his parents met each other and got married the usual way, ‘Let me propose’ and all this. But my parents didn’t have that chance.

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“My dad had a choice of two women, and he chose the prettiest one. So, my influence is that; I know their walk, I know their breathing, I know their personalities. They’ve helped me through many roles that I’ve played.”

Any advice that Chinn would personally give to Nora comes from a grandmotherly standpoint, she says. “I’m thinking two generations – not her mother’s generation but grandmother’s. I would say, ‘Make sure you don’t binge on the food, honour your friends and be truthful’.”

Nora’s grandmother, Chinn’s character, might have similar advice, she says. “I don’t know she goes and smokes pot or any of that stuff, I can only guess,” Chinn says. “So, yeah, that would be the advice from a grandmother. Make sure that you call your grandparents and your parents – you know, the usual thing. Because you’ll be sorry when they’re gone.”

Wong, who is openly gay and has a surrogate son with his former partner, says the joy of being a parent has filtered into his role of Wally in the series.

“I’ve always felt so lucky to have been able to become a parent, and that has drawn a great deal on my relationship with Nora and with Awkwafina. So, I think that’s the mainstay that I feel, while Wally starts dating again. He’s dating Brenda, who we met in season one, and as that relationship gets deeper, it threatens to influence Wally’s relationship with Nora.”

The complicated fallout from those relationships results in some hilarious moments, he adds. “So, the thing that I would say draws from my own personal life is the fact that I’m actually a parent and I can actually say, ‘Oh, I understand how he feels’.”

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Wong says he knows from personal experience that relationships fall apart and new relationships take their place. “I’m not a widower but I did have a separation and a new relationship. So, that’s very similar to what Wally has experienced.”

He says he has looked to his son for approval of the people he dated. “I get very emotional thinking about it because I know now, as I’m telling you this, that’s what I was drawing from in my relationship on-screen with Nora, is my own personal feelings about how deeply invested I was that my son accepted the people that I dated, in fact the person that I ended up with, most importantly.”

The series has no defined ending yet, so no one knows where Nora will finally wind up, Wong says. “But we do know the Nora who became Awkwafina – a magical, incredible influencer, fashion icon, award-winning actor, someone who has every right to be proud of herself, very proud of her journey and the work that she’s done.”

So if he was going to advise the young Nora or a young Awkwafina on the potential and pitfalls of life, he says he would strike a positive note. “It’s going to be OK, honey. It’s going to be OK, and you don’t have to worry. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Yang says during the second season of Nora, his character, Edmund, takes the plunge into professional acting, accepting a big risk and setting out on a new career with no connections in the industry. “In fact, he does not want the connections, even though he has specific resources that might expedite his way into this weird sector of show business that he wants to be a part of,” Yang says.

Yang’s own experience with the acting profession mirrors Edmund’s to some extent. “I had graduated college; I was on this path to going to med school. I was determined to follow through on it,” he says. Then Yang says he had a moment of “true reflection” and decided to choose acting as a profession instead of medicine.

“So I relate to Edmund deeply on that level of just thinking, ‘I don’t think my value system in life up until this point has been necessarily correct. Maybe this is my last chance to change that.’”

“I think Edmund’s having all these things taken away from him, whether it’s status or his education or his money, he is just able to assess in a moment of crisis what’s important to him and whether he’s being honest about what’s important to him. At least he’s able to vocalise that it’s acting. And I definitely experienced that as well.”

Esposito says sometimes it’s difficult to work out what her character Brenda, Wally’s girlfriend, would say in a given situation because she is so unpredictable. “Brenda, to me, she’s wise, but then she’s completely kooky, which I love,” Esposito says. “She’s so completely off the wall, which is so interesting to me. I think she’s a lot like Nora, actually.”

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Brenda’s advice to Nora, her boyfriend’s daughter in the series, would not be the usual and conventional words of mature adults to youngsters, Esposito says. Instead, Brenda might say “keep going, keep doing what you’re doing and be weird”.

“I mean, Brenda makes spoon art, so I don’t know how much advice she’s going to give her as far as, like, a relationship or getting a job. And messy is actually where you learn, where you grow, where you find love for yourself, for others. It’s completely the place you want to be.”

Awkwafina in Nora from Queens is shown on Amazon Prime Video

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