Hi,
Oh, my gosh.
So hi.
Hi, so nice to meet you.
Thanks, for being here in person.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to meet you, truly.
Well, thank you.
I'm excited to meet you too.
I'm listening to your voice, and I'm like, it's Dory.
I was such a big Disney fan.
I just think that you are truly iconic.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yes, I was a fish.
Thank you.
Nothing like what you're doing.
You made history.
You're the first Southeast Asian princess, Disney
princess, right?
I mean, that's--
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, it's crazy.
People are loving the movie.
I know tWitch's family is obsessed with it.
Tell us about the movie.
Well, it follows a young girl named
Raya, who when we first meet her has this really ideal way
of looking at the world.
And then the world falls apart, and she becomes this person
that you're seeing now who is fully distrustful of the world.
She doesn't even want to share food with anyone.
She very much believes in doing her own thing,
and keeping everyone separate from her.
And then she goes on this journey
to learn to find the good in the world again
and to learn how to trust again.
Beautiful story.
Yeah.
Beautiful story.
So your parents are from Vietnam.
They must be so proud.
Yeah.
And you brought them back to Vietnam
the first time in like 40 years or something.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was really incredible to be
able to bring them back to Vietnam
for the first time in 40 years, and to see where my dad grew up
on the streets of Vietnam, and it was wild.
And now, I got to wear an ao dai which
is a traditional Vietnamese dress to the virtual premiere
of Raya.
And I just felt like such a full circle moment.
And they were so, so proud.
And you went to-- this is so cool, I think,
that you went to--
South Africa, and you volunteered
at a wildlife reserve, right?
A rescue.
Yeah, I worked with elephants, wild dogs, rhino, cheetah,
the list goes on and on lions, and it was incredible.
I fully lived there for two months
and didn't have internet access and just was
really immersed in that world.
It was incredible to see and I am sure you know--
I would love to hear your experience about all this
too because--
Well, I love Africa.
And I just I'm working with Saving the Gorillas,
but I just love all animals.
I think that's so cool you went and volunteered and did that.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
I want to talk about it, because you're hearing,
we're all hearing everything, what's
happening against Asian-Americans and Pacific
Islanders.
And it's just heartbreaking to me.
And I can't imagine.
What are your thoughts when you hear this?
Yeah, it's been really, really difficult,
I think, to feel so many feelings at once.
It's such a difficult time for the Asian-American community,
and I think it hits everyone different.
So many of my friends have been talking about, OK,
what are the ways that we can productively help?
And also recognizing that we all need
to make sure that we're taking care
of ourselves and our mental health at the same time.
I think for me something that has been really strange
about it, is that I'm here talking about Raya,
this movie that is celebrating this part of the world which
very rarely gets to be celebrated.
And having that dichotomy of celebrating
this part of the world and then also acknowledging
these horrible things that are happening at the same time,
has been a very wild experience.
I really hope that this movie can give people
a little bit of joy in the middle of this really
tumultuous thing.
And if there's anything I've learned
from this whole experience and my own personal experiences
with racism, is that (SIGHS) community is the one way
to help combat any sort of negativity.
And I'm really inspired by seeing the ways
that people are really banding together to combat this thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, every everyone needs to combat this.
[APPLAUSE]
It's--
[APPLAUSE]
The first thing is talking about it, and making sure everybody
is aware of it.
And then like you said, community saying we're
not going to let this happen anymore.
We're going to stop this.
And if you see something, stop it.
Yeah.
So nice meeting you.
And I'm just-- I think that's so cool that like you said,
it's a weird thing that this dichotomy of that you
were celebrating this, you and this movie and this culture.
And so hopefully, like you said, this
does raise awareness for people.
"Raya and the Last Dragon" is in theaters and on Disney Plus
Premiere Access.
And we'll be back.