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Over the next few years, New York may degenerate into a post-L train, Mad Max Hellscape, sink underwater with the next flood or become an automated Sweetgreen panopticon prison. But! We're getting an Awkwafina TV show, so celebration is essential.
The Flushing-born rapper/actor will write, produce and star in a new half-hour comedy series from Comedy Central. She'll play a younger approximation of herself, hustling like a baller out of her family's apartment in Queens. She'll be joined by a roster of NYC excellence, including Law and Order: SVU's immortal B.D. Wong as her father, Orange is the New Black M.V.P. Lori Tan Chinn as her grandmother and SNL writer Bowen Yang as her more successful cousin.
The series is just the latest coup in Awkwafina's year-long conquest of Hollywood, which included two little movies you may have heard about, Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians. And we can't say we didn't see it coming: Our profile on "rising star" Awkwafina from 2016 is so old, you can't even find it online. As for Yang, a Time Out 2016 Comedian to Watch (ahem!), we couldn't be more giddy: The alt-comedy paragon and Las Culturistas podcast co-host continues to make the country smarter without us knowing it on SNL, all while showing off his fully deranged side on Awkwafina. It's as if all this excitement for the two stars is cosmically ordained...like a return of Saturn. Either way, we're looking up.
Awkwafina will soon shoot its first season. No release date has been announced.