Awkwafina can trace her comedic roots back to when she lost her mother. In an interview with The Guardian from 2018, she revealed that her mother had been diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension after Awkwafina was born and then died when she was 4 years old. At the time, Awkwafina said she didn’t like when adults around her expressed sadness.
“It was a very slow illness and she lived for four more years. I remember her, but I remember mostly when she passed… Obviously it was a very tragic situation, but I felt odd and uncomfortable when adults cried to me,” she recalled. “One of the first emotions I ever felt was embarrassment. So I started trying to make them laugh.” Speaking with People, she also said that she felt the urge to lighten people’s moods. “I needed people to feel joy. That’s [how] all this began. I was the class clown all the way.”
To this day, she wonders if she would have be able to achieve all the things she did if her mom hadn’t died. “I think all the time, what would I have been doing if my mom hadn’t passed?” the comedian added. “I don’t think I’d be here, because I think that I had to face a certain level of trauma to be so joyously self-deprecating and so free.”
