Please welcome the one and only Awkwafina.
[CHEERING]
All right, all right, all right.
- Wow. - Thanks.
Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming.
That was a good one. Thanks, guys.
Wow. - It's good to see you.
Yeah, good to see you again.
It's great.
So what's this one, this is what?
Kung Fu Panda--
Did they give you one like that when you came out?
Yeah, they did.
It was even louder when I came out, right?
Oh, good, good.
So Kung Fu Panda 4, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Good movie.
Great movie, great movie.
I agree, I think it's amazing.
Yeah.
You know, I'm in that movie too.
Oh, yeah, right, yes, you are in that movie.
Yes, you are in that movie.
Yeah, I'm in that movie too, so--
You are in that movie.
RONNY CHIENG: Why don't you--
you know, you're doing all this press for it.
Yeah, I've been doing a lot.
No one's asking me any questions about that movie.
Why don't you ask me some questions about this movie?
I'm in it too. Ask me some questions about it.
You are in it.
RONNY CHIENG: You want to ask me?
OK, yeah, OK, so it's really good.
OK, I'm going to go out.
You introduce me as a guest, OK?
Just read that.
And you can ask me some questions, all right?
- You're going to go out? - Yeah.
Just read from there, OK? Just read there.
I'll come out, all right?
And then interview me about this movie.
Yeah. - OK.
OK.
My guest--
RONNY CHIENG: Wait, wait.
OK, go.
Go.
[CHEERING]
Wow, thank you, guys.
That's so nice.
My guest tonight is a towering figure in comedy,
an icon for all Asians, a colossal acting talent who
deserves his own action franchise,
and my personal hero who I'm honored to even
breathe the same air with.
Please welcome Ronny Chieng.
[CHEERING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CROWD: Ronny! Ronny!
Ronny! Ronny!
Ronny!
Yeah, yeah, you hear that?
OK, so give me some.
Ask me these questions.
Thank you, traitors.
OK, here we go.
RONNY CHIENG: I prepared some questions for you in
case you--
Your voice acting is so realistic.
Did you go to Juilliard or something?
Oh, I'm glad you asked that.
You know, I just think that sometimes with voice acting,
you want to, you know, be as natural as you can.
So I'm kind of proud to say I didn't have
any formal training in it.
I just-- you know, I just think authenticity is the
key to good animal animation.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Yes. RONNY CHIENG: Yeah.
100% that.
I mean, this year, we saw actors take on some incredibly
challenging roles with "Sill-ian"
Murphy or Cillian Murphy in as Oppenheimer,
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, and Ronny Chieng
as Fish in Kung Fu Panda 4.
How do you--
[CHEERING]
Yeah, keep it going.
Keep it going.
How did you prepare to take on such a big role?
Well, you know, I've been kind of eating fish
my whole life, so--
Oh, nice, OK.
--I feel like I knew what this character
would really taste like. And I kind of--
AWKWAFINA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, I channeled that into--
I tried to put a little bit of fishiness into--
AWKWAFINA: You live inside a bird.
Yes, in this--
spoiler alert.
Yeah, I live in--
I live in a bird, a unique character.
You know, it's actually the second marine character
to ever appear in a Kung Fu Panda franchise.
- Really? - Yeah, second one, yeah.
Wow.
[CHEERING]
Go figure.
It's hard to show aquatic animals on land,
but we figured it out, yeah.
This is the fourth project you've done with me.
How does it feel to always be below me on the call sheet?
RONNY CHIENG: OK, you know what?
OK, OK, all right--
Wait, I didn't forget--
is that what it says?
All right.
Anyway, this is the fourth project we've done together.
We have.
RONNY CHIENG: We've done so much cool stuff together.
We have.
Yeah, we've done Crazy Rich Asians.
We did Shang-Chi. - We did Shang-Chi together.
We did Kung Fu Panda.
Wait, what was the other one? That's three.
You were on my show.
RONNY CHIENG: Oh, yeah, I was on Awkwafina--
Yes.
--Is Nora from Queens, Nora from Queens on Comedy Central.
Whoops, yeah, I was on that.
I forgot that I was on that show
that was on my own network. - Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for having me on that, by the way.
Thank you for coming on.
Yeah, you're such a cool icon,
you know, from New York City, born and raised, Queens.
- Yeah, yes. - Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
What's your what's your connection to New York City?
What do you mean?
RONNY CHIENG: Like, yeah.
I mean, I was from here, raised here.
I love, you know, bagels and pizza--
RONNY CHIENG: No, no, but--
sorry, I should have asked the question,
but I meant like you had your family restaurant here, right?
Oh, yeah, right, yeah, my--
yeah, my-- we had the first Chinese restaurant in Flushing
was called Lum's, yes.
[CHEERING]
Whose restaurant was that?
It was my great-grandpa.
My great-grandpa Jimmy Lum came over in the 1940s.
And then it kind of went out of business
in the '80s, but yeah, yeah.
RONNY CHIENG: Reaganomics, yeah.
And then--
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But what was--
you grew up in that restaurant?
I didn't-- I grew up in a restaurant.
Because then they had an offshoot.
After Lum's closed, my grandma opened a new one.
And so I grew up in the restaurant and stuff.
I would eat.
I would-- yeah.
Yeah, so very much in the--
In the kitchen.
I ate like a scoop of MSG one time, like just--
literally, literally.
It was crazy.
It was, like, a crazy--
it was nuts, yeah.
RONNY CHIENG: OK, maybe I should try that sometime too.
Yeah.
It wakes you up.
Yeah, well, this new--
I got to spend at least some--
I got to talk to you about this movie a little bit, Kung
Fu Panda 4, because you're--
Yeah.
You play a corlack--
OK, sorry, corsac fox.
--corsac fox.
Are you mispronouncing it on purpose?
- Is that a real animal? - It is a real animal.
RONNY CHIENG: OK, corsac.
A beautiful Asian fox, yeah.
Yes, you play a beautiful Asian fox in Kung Fu Panda 4.
Yeah, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
[CHEERING]
AWKWAFINA: Thank you, literally.
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, there you go.
That's what you look like over there.
And I don't know if I spoil it, but it's a pretty
important role in this.
Because not only are you the second lead, you know,
something happens in this movie that really--
it really will change the franchise forever, I think.
I don't know if you can talk about that, but--
you want-- you can't say what's going to--
The spoiler alert? RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, yeah, OK.
Well, I think--
I think the movie is just-- this one, I watched it a lot.
I was a fan of it.
And I'm a huge fan of Jack Black, who is
kind of reprising this role.
Yeah, Jack Black is the best.
Yeah, I mean, he's really the real deal.
And so I think it's now speaking to,
I think, the adults that kind of
watched it and them moving on and stuff like change
and stuff like that, so.
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, that's great.
OK.
So we kind of really lost steam in this one after the first--
Did we lose steam?
Yeah, once we started being too sincere, we kind of lost,
yeah. - OK.
RONNY CHIENG: When we were doing the bit, it was great.
Do you want me to be less sincere?
RONNY CHIENG: No, no, no, it's OK.
We'll edit all this out.
And we'll go from--
OK, OK, we'll edit it out in post.
OK I'll give you--
I'll give you something for YouTube.
OK, OK.
So what was it like working with Jack Black?
It was so good.
I loved it.
[LAUGHTER]
I loved it.
I love him.
Are you really asking me?
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, I'm really asking you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, we'll use it to say-- we'll cut
out all the stuff that's bad. Only these people will know.
You're going to cut out all of--
We'll cut out everything.
We'll start the interview from here.
OK, yeah.
So how was it like working with Jack Black?
Working with Jack Black is amazing-- are you kidding?
RONNY CHIENG: No, no, I'm not.
No, do it.
Just do the press thing so we can go home.
Do the press thing. Do the--
What do you--
Yeah, just say, Jack Black's great, movie's great, and, you
know, I was like-- yeah.
Just go into press mode. Go into press mode.
OK, Jack--
What's it like working with Jack Black?
You know what, Ronny?
It was so good.
And Kung Fu Panda 4, you especially, so good in it,
right? RONNY CHIENG: Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Hope we can sell a lot of stuffed animals in that thing.
I don't know because--
you would be interesting because you have to open
the whole bird's mouth.
Yeah, my stuffed animal is actually
like two figures in one. So it costs a lot of--
- That's cool. - Yeah.
Also, you know, Jack Black, interestingly, his mom,
his mother was one of the women who contributed
to the NASA Apollo program.
AWKWAFINA: Yeah.
She coded the programs that let men go to the moon.
Yeah.
So, you know, way to go, Jack Black's mom, Judith Cohen.
Totally.
Not just a physical genius, you know,
I got to meet him at the premiere.
Because I'm not famous enough to hang out with you
guys in the studio, so-- - You were.
You were in the TikTok with them.
You got in the TikTok. - No, at the premiere.
Yeah.
RONNY CHIENG: I met him at the first night--
at the movie premiere. He was very nice.
Right, I was nice to see you there.
Yeah, you were nice to see me.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And he's just such a ball of energy.
You know, he's like a physical genius.
He is.
It's very hard to keep up with him.
I mean, he's so funny.
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, he's super funny, very energetic.
Also, a bunch of other Asians in this movie?
- Yes. - James Hong.
[LAUGHTER]
No, I meant that sincerely.
James Hong's in it.
James Hong, the legend.
Legendary James Hong, he's, like, 94.
Legendary.
I think he's still in it.
Yes, I mean, he's--
we were at The Grove.
And we went up the trolley.
And he-- I think he was doing a bit.
But he was like, oh, no, there's stairs.
But then he-- I think he was joking.
He ran up them.
Oh yeah.
He's like so sprightly, so much energy.
It's-- - Yeah, yeah.
It was so cool.
RONNY CHIENG: --unlike some presidents I know, yeah.
Yeah, he's still going very strong.
And when you hear his voice acting in the movie,
you're like, this dude doesn't sound 94 at all.
This guy sounds like-- you know?
I think he was the best other Asian actor in the--
RONNY CHIENG: Asian other than--
--in the movie, yeah.
Other than?
CROWD: Ronny.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, Ronny is incredible in it.
All right, OK, you know what?
Let's end this so we can go home.
No, no, it's really good to see you, man.
You're honestly the best.
I've known you for so long.
You've always been really cool to me.
Kung Fu Panda 4 is in theaters nationwide on March 8.
Awkwafina, everybody.