GRUMPY MAGAZINE - Auli'i Cravalho (Solo Edition)

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This standalone feature is taken from Grumpy Magazine’s IN CONVERSATION series and exclusively available as a solo story featuring one talent and 20+ pages of interview and photos.

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TEAM & CONTRIBUTORS Jasmine Perrier at Studio J•T•P Publisher | Editor-in-chief | Producer | Writer | Designer Contributors Nicole Maines | Sami Drasin | Amanda Lim | Crystal Tran Phoebe Seligman | Caroline Tilley

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uli’i Cravalho has come far

The Darby and the Dead co-stars turned fast friends refreshingly talk about what it takes to prepare for a role, personal struggles, and career ambitions.

INTERVIEW BY Nicole Maines PHOTOGRAPHY BY Sami Drasin STYLING BY Amanda Lim at The Only Agency MAKEUP BY Crystal Tran for Exclusive Artists using Koh Gen Do HAIR BY Phoebe Seligman at Art Department using Amika STYLIST ASSISTANT Caroline Tilley PRODUCTION BY Jasmine Perrier at Studio J•T•P

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IN CONVERSATION WITH

Auli'i Cravalho 06

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uli’i Cravalho is a ray of sunshine. Hailing from Hawaii, she found the road to Hollywood quite unexpectedly when she became the voice of Disney’s

heroine Moana at 14. For the rising star who is now 22, it was a once-in-alifetime project and she didn’t take anything for granted. Since then, she has worked consistently to expand her acting range and excelled in the comedy space with films such as Hulu’s Crush and most recently, Darby and the Dead.

On the near horizon for Auli’i is Amazon’s The Power, a series based on Naomi Alderman’s sci-fi book of the same name. The day before our meeting, it was also announced that she will join Paramount’s musical adaptation of Mean Girls.

On this occasion, she cheerfully connected with her friend and Darby and the Dead co-star Nicole Maines to celebrate the news and talk about her Hawaiian upbringing, life after her big break, and her current state of mind.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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‘‘

There aren’t many stories that are written for young Hawaiians, so having it as my big break, I’ll never see a project like that again. No other job after our big ones has been luck. After that, it takes skills.

AULI’I CRAVALHO: Hi! Sorry, I’m so late.

’’

NM: Playing a cheerleader and being a cheerleader are two different things.

NICOLE MAINES: No apologies to me girl, I have nowhere to be. How are you?

AC: Do you remember when we were in a conference room the first time?

AC: I’m good, happy Saturday. Thank you for being here on your day off.

NM: That’s right! We were in a conference room and we were doing one on ones.

NM: Of course. Thank you so much for asking me to do this. I’m so excited. I always have fun when we talk and I adore you.

AC: We were using chairs because I was going to be a flyer, so he was like, ‘‘We don’t have anyone out here. Just pretend these two chairs are the people holding you up.’’ And I went, ‘‘Yeah, sure,’’ before going, ‘‘What?’’ But I did it with a smile.

AC: Thank you.

NM: We have to start with when we first met at your rehearsal [for Darby and the Dead].

NM: See, I did not. [Auli’i laughs] I was fine right up until they told me, ‘‘We need you to be upside down.’’

AC: Were we still in LA? NM: In the Disney Studios.

AC: That’s when the line was drawn?

AC: The sweet man was trying to teach us back handsprings in a gym.

NM: You’ll notice in the film that everyone else is flying in the air. And they said, ‘‘We really love the ground for you Nicole.’’

NM: I remember when I agreed to do the film, they were like, ‘‘You don’t need to know how to cheerlead.’’ But when we rolled up...

[Laughs] How did you feel? It was a struggle.

AC: You are taller than all of us.

NM: I was fine with it. I was like, ‘‘I will keep my two feet on earth and I will not break my neck.’’

AC: I’m a people pleaser, so I was like, ‘‘Let’s go for it.’’ And then, when my lower back hurt the next day, I realized, ‘‘That’s not my job.’’ [Laughs]

AC: Kylie [Liya Page] and Genneya [Walton]

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NM: Do you know what I was doing when I was 14?

were also meant to be bases. We had one practice in South Africa and they had gone to the pool beforehand, so they were slippery with sunscreen and I was like, ‘‘I need to not do this.’’ Then, we had people holding us.

AC: No. NM: Girl, neither do I [laughs].

NM: Actual people who knew what they were doing. I loved that for us. Going backwards, what is the artist’s origin for Auli’i Cravalho?

AC: And then, singing and acting actually became real life, and I was like, ‘‘I just get to dress up and play pretend every day?’’

When I think of so many other actors who religiously watched films and the classics, have their favorite directors, have been in an acting class... In comparison, I have to take a step back and be like, ‘‘That is a love and dedication that I simply don’t have.’’ So, we are super grateful. But at the same time, there is so much pressure to make acting your whole sphere. For me, I respect it as a job and I keep it in that ‘‘job’’ sphere.

AC: I really fell into this and I feel grateful for it. But I can’t start to talk about my origin without talking about Moana, that was my first job. Before that, I was in school and church plays, and I loved singing. I sang in the church choir. In Jesus of Nazareth, I was always the crying woman in the corner.

Every Easter, they were calling me. They brought me a lot of joy, so you know what?

That was my beginning.

NM: I get that. There is something you said that really stuck out to me — you were saying that living in Hawaii, you didn’t really feel that it was a viable path. I think a lot of people feel like they have to live in New York or Los Angeles, or it’s simply not going to happen. I grew up in rural Maine, so growing up in Hawaii, how did that shape your identity personally but also professionally?

I guess being Moana, it’s a big part of that.

NM: We love a church play.

AC: And I was the backup for Mrs. Claus in my 5th grade play, but then, Brooke got it in the end. I’m still not over it. But I liked it, and I grew up in a single-parent household, so my mom was like, ‘‘College.’’ I didn’t think of anyone casting anything in Hawaii, so when Moana came along, I was in a molecular cell biology course, which was my summer course, and I told my friends that I was going to the dentist. I truly was the last girl in the last year of casting. My friends and I did this acapella mashup of songs for extra credit and we were sending in our tape to become the entertainment of a non-profit event.

We didn’t make it past the first round, but the woman who was casting for this nonprofit event, she was also doing the Moana casting. She said, ‘‘Who is that girl — last row, second in the left?’’ I was like, ‘‘That’s me.’’ Then, she asked if I wanted to audition for Moana and it changed my life.

AC: Yeah. Now that we are talking about small towns, I knew all the families there and I knew the trajectory of the possible jobs. You work for your parents or you work at the local grocery store, shoutout to Takata store. The nearest McDonald’s was an hour away, so you just stay in your town, and I think I knew I didn’t want to do that. So, I was at Kamehameha which is a boarding school an island away, that’s where I got my auditions and things like that. But I’m very glad I grew up in Hawaii because I have deep roots of culture and a deep understanding of my values. In our traditional stories, the first child of Sky Father and Earth Mother was stillborn and that was Kalo or Taro, which is one of our staple foods. It’s like if we take care of our older brother, our older brother will take care of us. And then, it just heads beautifully into Moana. I’m grateful that the filmmakers wanted to do it right and decided to cast native people like me.

I grew up with the story of Maui pulling up the islands with his fishhook. It felt right.

NM: So she is smart!

AC: We didn’t talk about this? I was hoping to become an attorney for pharmaceutical medicines, for the testing of new medicines because I wanted to have a biology background.

NM: How old were you at this point?

AC: I was 14 when I was cast.

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NM: That’s awesome. Talking about representation, I feel like anyone who is not a cis, straight white man, etc. has felt in some shape or form that their identity is going to limit their career. Is that something you still struggle with?

create some mold in people’s minds. They see you as this iconic one thing. What has it been like trying to show people another side of you? Specifically once Capri [Auli’i’s character in Darby and the Dead] says ‘‘bitch’’ a lot. Will we ever hear Moana say that?

AC: When I first moved out of Hawaii, I moved to New York. Because Moana was [in my element], I was like, ‘‘How do I represent my culture and be this role model when I’m out of my element?’’ But now, casting calls me racially ambiguous so I go, ‘‘Alright, I don’t know what that means, but I’m not going to allow it to give me a complex.’’ It’s easier for me to push things like that away.

Can you repeat the question?

AC: No, you won’t. I can’t even swear in Hawaiian. But yes, I got to perform at the Oscars in 2017, that’s crazy to start off like that. Now, I realize I love acting because playing characters who are more away from myself makes me more empathetic, and I’m more interested in learning about this person and leaning into my own flaws.

Moana was simply about a 16-year-old who didn’t know what she wanted, but she was willing to paddle away across the ocean to save her family. It was a very clear motive for me because I was her. But for instance, Capri is very different from me. At first, I was like, ‘‘She is a mean girl, she is rude and ditzy,’’ but when I put on the boots and read the script, I realized we share more parts.

I just added a bit of campness and it was also lovely to lean into an aspect of comedy.

Capri is one of the most fun characters to play because I don’t need to write a very deep tragic backstory. I just get to show up on the day and create something. We both experienced this working on Darby and the Dead because we wrote a lot of our own lines.

NM: You and I have both been very lucky to be cast in roles that allow us to be these icons of representation. Dreamer [Nicole’s character on Supergirl] and Moana are both firmly grounded in their identities, and that’s a huge part of the appeal and the marketing. And despite all of that, I know I sometimes still have this feeling of, ‘‘I’m trans so I’m not going to be able to do this.’’

I was wondering if you still struggle with that as well.

AC: I totally hear you. There aren’t many stories that are written for young Hawaiians, so having it as my big break, I’ll never see a project like that again. No other job after our big ones has been luck. After that, it takes skills. We have auditioned, toiled, and we have been told ‘‘no’’ hundreds of times in between. A deep part of me is sad that nothing will come close to that. But I know that to have that feeling again, we will have to write it ourselves.

NM: Yes, it was a lot of improvisation.

AC: That was my first time experiencing that and it worked really well. So, trusting your comedy instinct was what I learned most from this last project.

NM: It was a lot of fun on the Darby’s set [thanks to] the room Silas [Howard] gave us to be complete psychopaths [laughs].

NM: 100%. I’m working hard to write comic books for that very reason. When Supergirl ended, I went to DC and said, ‘‘You have this character now, what are you going to do with her?’’ And there was no plan. I was very fortunate that they were open and said, ‘‘Yes, do it, write it.’’ Now I have to learn another thing [laughs].

AC: That was what got us through.

NM: Now, you have consistently killed it.

Each of your characters is an undeniable icon. When you are choosing a role, what do you look for?

AC: I know that feeling.

AC: I look for characters that I haven’t played before and things that I can throw myself into physically. I once had a conversation about Charlize Theron. The person across from me said, ‘‘Charlize doesn’t play women

NM: Moving forward, I guess a lot of actors struggle with having this huge success right at the start, and they struggle to

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AC: Because of Heathers. She’s got so much range and so much training that I don’t have yet. But I’m really excited because it’s Mean Girls the movie, the musical. I’ve been dying to get into the musical theater space.

And it’s also Paramount, such a good studio.

My heart is very full and it does feel like the steps that my career has taken, have been getting steadily higher.

who are fragile,’’ like women who are easily broken. And I thought, ‘‘That’s such a beautiful way to say that.’’

NM: That is a great thing to keep in mind.

AC: That really resonated with me. Like AJ for Crush, I leaned into getting skateboarding lessons, which got cut out of the movie.

NM: But now you have a skill, girl!

NM: It’s all happening the way it’s supposed to.

AC: It’s true. I can almost do an ollie, and for the film, I did pop the skateboard into my hand, all by myself. I think that was a big part of AJ’s character and a good thing for me because my pride was bruised. I hate being in public and falling. I hated that people who were younger than me were better than me. But I really like to prepare for roles. For Capri, I got to pull on the harness, and as crazy as the prep time was, it was also fun to be thrown into the air. I’m adapting right now a book to movie and it’s like survival. I just want to throw myself into it and experience not acting pretty or worrying about my femininity at all. As I continue my career, I expect it to get greedier and I’m really looking forward to it.

AC: Thank you. I have to trust in that in the in between, when it goes quiet and my thoughts get really loud.

NM: That always happens though. I think that’s the occupational hazard. You are buried under everything, and then you are like, ‘‘This is it, they are done, they stopped asking.’’ And then, it comes again and you can’t breathe. It’s a perpetual state of breathlessness and anxiety.

AC: That was a perfect way to say it.

NM: It leads me to another question. So, you’ve been tearing it up in the teen comedy genre. What makes that specifically appealing to you? Because you are so good at it.

NM: Some of the most fun is when you are covered in blood, covered in dirt, and you look like a mess. Because when you see that on screen, you are like, ‘‘I did that.’’

AC: Thank you! I realize I love writing my own lines. That’s gonna be a red flag for any director, casting, or producer, but I am an icon in the teen comedy space [laughs].

Capri was the first time I played more of a character, but otherwise, I do the same process for comedy as I would for a drama role. I like doing the homework, I like giving the backstory, I like figuring out how they would hold their hands, what their walk looks like... I pretend to be the character for a day and walk around whatever city I’m in.

I can’t do it here in LA because there are too many characters already, but Vancouver is a perfect spot because you can just walk around the downtown area and pretend to be someone else. I always want my performances to feel grounded and that was important for Capri. That is why I wrote so many of her lines because I wanted her to have a character arc. So, there was a bit of relief at the end of realizing, ‘‘Oh, she is traumatized.’’

AC: I haven’t done that yet. I can’t wait.

NM: Speaking of what comes next, you’ve got The Power, and then, just yesterday, they announced you will be Janis Ian in the Mean Girls musical movie! This isn’t so much a question, I haven’t fangirled about this with you in person yet.

AC: I know! Give me a [virtual] hug.

NM: Congratulations! You’re giving the gaze everything we want.

AC: I was actually in Vancouver when I first met with the directors. First, I love Barrett [Wilbert Weed] who sings and portrays Janis in the [Broadway] musical. I’ve been obsessed with her voice specifically.

NM: Heathers?

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NM: As you’ve been consistently hitting it out of the park for a minute, what do you do to recharge? What is a hobby that people might not know about?

guns in there, sorry. We will get bayonets.

NM: [Laughs] Ok, we will close out with a lighting round. I’m going to ask you a series of unrelated, controversial, and stupid questions. Starting out with one that could very well end this friendship, do you cut a sandwich into squares or triangles?

AC: I’m currently in love. We like to keep it private but he is someone that I found a great deal of comfort in, and I didn’t realize how wonderful it feels to feel supported and held emotionally. I live in my own apartment, by myself and my cat, so I often felt alone in this space.

AC: First of all, who cuts sandwiches at this age? I don’t have time to dirty a knife. How do you cut your sandwich so that I know?

NM: Triangles. I don’t know how to describe it, it unexplainably tastes better when it’s cut into a triangle. Going way back, was the dress black and blue or white and gold?

NM: We don’t do roommates. We are very comfortable with our own company.

AC: [Laughs] You and I are the same. My body is at ease when I’m by myself. What else? I’ve got a Switch. I don’t like Animal Crossing, I’ll be honest.

AC: Black and blue.

NM: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

NM: I’ve never played it. What’s been your favorite game?

AC: Yes. But I’d like to say that pineapple is not from Hawaii, it is from Madagascar.

Also, when I eat Hawaiian pizza, I don’t want ham on it. I just want a good cheesy pizza.

AC: Super Mario Odyssey, there are so many things to collect.

NM: Ok, last one. Is cheesecake cake or a pie?

NM: As we are talking games, you have to play the Bayonetta series. It’s my favorite game series of all time.

AC: I think it’s a pie. When we look at how we make a cheesecake, there is a crust and it has a filling.

AC: Bayonetta is who I envision as you.

NM: If we had the opportunity to work together again, I think no matter what it is, it has to be a comedy.

NM: That’s a pie, mamma. And that’s the title of this interview. Is there anything that I did not ask you and you are dying to talk about?

AC: It has to be a comedy. First of all, we both have to be alive, or both be dead.

AC: This is my cat, Rocco. We went to the park yesterday. He likes to sit on the grass, but he tried to eat a bee yesterday and did try to chase a squirrel. But it’s ok, he is just a little curious.

NM: We have to be able to see each other.

AC: What’s that movie, the one where they make their own clothes, but then they go back to high school after they left it?

NM: Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion?

NM: He said, ‘‘Don’t tell me what I’m about.’’

[Laughs]

AC: Yes! We should do something like that where we are the duo.

AC: This is the only person that you missed in my interview.

NM: I agree. I love this for us, if anyone is listening. A buddy cop movie? That would be hilarious.

NM: I love him.

AC: That would be so fun. But we can’t put

NM: It was really good to talk to you.

AC: Thank you for interviewing me.

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‘‘

I look for characters that I haven’t played before and things that I can throw myself into physically. I once had a conversation about Charlize Theron. The person across from me said, “Charlize doesn’t play women who are fragile,” like women who are easily broken.

And I thought, “That’s such a beautiful way to say that.”

’’

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