The Farewell debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to rave reviews. The first full trailer dropped on Tuesday. Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images It's no secret that Awkwafina had an incredible 2018; from Crazy Rich Asians to Oceans 8 to hosting Saturday Night Live, the rapper and comedian catapulted herself into Hollywood's A-list. She also stunned on the pink carpet at Monday's Met Gala. Well, now she's moving from the supporting characters she's been playing to the leading role in, and undisputed star of, the new indie film The Farewell. The trailer for the movie dropped Tuesday, and be prepared, because it will probably make you cry. Awkwafina plays Billi, a young woman born in China but raised in the US, who returns to her birth country with her family to say goodbye to her sick grandmother, or Nai-Nai. The catch is that her grandmother doesn't know she's dying because the family has decided to keep her terminal illness a secret from her so she can enjoy her last few months. The story is "based on an actual lie" involving the family of director Lulu Wang, who shared the tale with This American Life back in 2016. "When I heard the news, I wanted to talk with my grandmother, comfort her. I wanted to grieve with her in the way that seems natural when someone you love is dying," she said in the podcast. "But my mom ... quickly informed me that what I wanted, that what I thought was the right thing to do, would not be permitted and that I would have no say in the matter." The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was the talk of all those in attendance. "There’s a melancholy hovering in the background and Awkwafina does fine work expressing this through her eyes," wrote Guardian reviewer Benjamin Lee, "so close to tears yet unable to release for fear of revealing the secret. She gives an accomplished dramatic performance." Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson praised Awkwafina for toning down the comedic skills she displayed in Crazy Rich Asians and being able to "[access] the tender and sorrowful energy of the film." "This is the rapper-actress’s first lead role—a dramatic one to boot—and she handles it superbly, giving an observant and carefully pitched performance that augurs good things for her big-screen future," he wrote. We got us a poster. #TheFarewellMovie trailer dropping today and I’m very excited. @A24 @thumbelulu<doc-sep>It’s difficult to overstate just how incredible Lulu Wang’s new film is. Starring Awkwafina in her dramatic debut after comedic supporting roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8, The Farewell is based on actual events in Wang’s life and, as the trailer teases, “an actual lie.” Billi (Awkwafina), a young Chinese-American woman whose career as an artist is starting to feel unmoored, finds her life thrown into further flux when her grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The family has made the decision to keep the diagnosis a secret. It wants to use the pretext of Billi’s cousin’s wedding to convene in China and, as per the film’s title, bid her farewell. Related The best movies we saw at Sundance 2019 It’s a lie — or rather, a lie by omission — that weighs heavily on Billi’s mind, especially as she and other members of the family find it increasingly difficult to keep their emotions in check. The film grapples with that sense of conflict, and digs into Billi’s conflicting feelings of belonging and alienation in China as well as the struggle her parents went through in moving their family to America. The experience that Wang is committing to film may be a deeply specific one — the tiny details will ring painfully true for anyone who’s ever felt torn between two cultures — but the emotions she evokes are universal. Filling out the rest of the cast are Tzi Ma as Billi’s father, Diana Lin as Billi’s mother, Jiang Yongbo as Billi’s uncle, and Lu Hong as Nai Nai’s younger sister. The Farewell is set to be released by A24 on July 12.<doc-sep>The Farewell (2019 Movie) Close this dialog window Streaming Options Have you called your grandma lately? Because you’re about to. A24 unveiled the first trailer for the Sundance breakout The Farewell on Tuesday, ahead of the affecting dramedy’s July release. Awkwafina stars in the indie as Billi, a young Chinese-American woman who finds out that her beloved grandmother has cancer. Determined to conceal the diagnosis from the matriarch, Billi’s family contrives to plan a wedding for her cousin in China, just to give everyone an excuse to see Nai Nai one last time. The story, teased as being “based on an actual lie,” was inspired by events from writer-director Lulu Wang’s own life. After initially pitching the idea around Hollywood, “the instinct from a lot of companies was to make it broad,” the filmmaker tells EW. “The direction that a lot of people wanted to take it, was, ‘Well, why wouldn’t she be the bride?’” But Wang didn’t want to make “the Chinese version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” as potential collaborators kept suggesting. After connecting with a producer on This American Life, she shared the story on a 2016 episode of the podcast, which attracted producer Chris Weitz and the team at Big Beach Films, who ultimately produced Wang’s true vision for the movie. “It was really important to me to make this film not according to sort of the constructs of a genre, but according to emotions and the authenticity of the experience,” she says. Emotional though the history is, there’s real humor at the heart of the film too. “For me, what was so important was more the absurdity of the situation,” Wang says about finding the tricky tone. “A lot of the silent awkwardness, and the juxtaposition of the interior of the character vs. this external performance that she had to put on.” Luckily, she found a leading lady who knew how to tap into that sense of comedy. The Farewell marks Awkwafina’s first dramatic starring role, but upon reading the script, she felt she had no choice. “I really never thought that a script like this would exist,” says the actress, who was inspired by her real-life connection to her own Chinese grandmother. “I never thought that it would come to me; I never thought that it would be helmed by a female Asian-American. So this was very special all around.” Check out the trailer above. The Farewell hits theaters July 12. Close this dialog window Streaming Options Related content:<doc-sep>
Anyone worth their salt agrees that Awkwafina knows her way around comedy. The 30-year-old rapper and comedian has already made her mark starring in landmark films like Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean's 8, and now she's changing it up with her newest film project, The Farewell. Based on "an actual lie," the indie film tells the story of Billi (played by Awkwafina), a young woman born in China but raised in the US, and her discovery that her grandmother Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Nai Nai has been given a short time to live, but her family decides not to tell her that she's dying: instead, they throw an impromptu wedding to unite their scattered family members and reconnect with her before she passes. Billi travels back to her birth country to say goodbye to her sick grandmother and struggles to hold back her emotions around her sweet (and endearingly meddlesome, as only grandparents can be) Nai Nai. While the film largely deals with the inevitability of death and how one family deals with it, it also delves into Billi's own struggle with her identity as a Chinese-American and how it affects her interactions with her extended family. As Billi goes from one home to another, she struggles with the weight of her family's lie, saying goodbye to her beloved Nai Nai without revealing her motivation, and feeling like a fish out of water in China. It's an intense mix of emotions to convey on screen, and from the looks of the trailer, Awkwafina pulls it off beautifully. The Farewell is based on the true story of director Lulu Wang, who previously shared her story with This American Life back in 2016. The trailer for the film dropped on May 7 and has already garnered rave reviews from its debut at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Along with Awkwafina, the film stars Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, and Jiang Yongbo. Check out the emotional trailer above, and look out for The Farewell in theaters on July 12.