Awkwafina has become very known specifically for her voice across the past decade, and with that comes some pros and cons. The pros is she’s consistently gotten a lot of awesome roles in animated movies and TV shows. One con that she’s noticed is that she’s starting to get typecast as birds.
When CinemaBlend had the chance to speak to Awkwafina, I brought up her impressive history with voice work. When I asked if she wants to pitch her next role in the animation world, she’s the one that brought up the topic, saying this:
I’ve done quite a few birds, so maybe moving out of the bird.
Awkwafina has played a total of three birds in animated movies. It started with 2016’s Storks in her very first voice-acting role. She was a female quail named Quail. Then, in 2023 she played two different bird roles: she was Scuttle in the live-action The Little Mermaid and Chump in Migration.
Funny enough, she was also in The Angry Birds Movie 2 (as a pig), in a movie called Swan Song (which has nothing to do with birds and is in live-action) and had a cameo role in Netflix’s Tuca & Bertie, which is about two anthropomorphic female birds. I totally get why she might be getting tired of it, and is ready to move on.
The 38-year-old actress’s latest role on the 2026 movie schedule, Wildwood, breaks that trend, given she plays a rat named Septima. The film is an impressive stop-motion movie that’s been in the works at Laika for sixteen years. During our interview, we also talked about how 140k facial expressions were made by the production team to bring the fantasy story to life.
Septima’s design in particular is quite interesting because the character stands less than two inches tall on these practical sets. In order to animate the character to scale, as shared on Instagram, the team had to build the smallest animation armature to achieve this technical feat.
Awkwafina may have lent her voice to this character, but she told us that she and the other actors didn’t really get to see the magic be made firsthand. Either way, all the work is certainly being appreciated by the masses given its incredible Rotten Tomatoes scores average out to a near-perfect 98 percent.
While Awkwafina may often be an animated bird, and be ready to end that phase of her career, she certainly has had a diverse career outside of that. From teaming up with Sandra Oh on the hilarious Quiz Lady to being one of those comedians who proved to be great in a dramatic role for The Farewell, there’s always something new up Awkwafina’s sleeve and we can’t wait to continue to follow her career. Wildwood is in theaters now.
