While Awkwafina was initially seeking anonymity through her stage name, it quickly became a shield. "I would not be able to perform onstage without Awkwafina; Nora could not perform," she told NPR in 2018. "All the neuroses, all the self-consciousness that comes with adulthood, Awkwafina doesn't have that."
Just a couple years ago, she said that she had plans to drop the stage name... one day. "I don't think an 85-year-old Awkwafina will be the most normal look," she told The Guardian in 2018. "By then people will be laughing at me, not with me — I will be coughing loudly and yelling at birds."
