As I’ve often said, celebrity friendships are often more interesting than celebrity romances. And here’s a new celebrity friendship that we’re just find out about – Elliot Page and Awkwafina were photographed hanging out yesterday in New York. Awkwafina is from New York so it looks like she’s home for Thanksgiving. Since she and Elliot haven’t worked together before it’s not known how they met but in my imagination, they were introduced by another Canadian, Sandra Oh. Earlier this year, Awkwafina was in London with Sandra when they filmed their upcoming comedy for Netflix about two sisters and a game show.
It's been a booked and busy 2021 for Awkwafina with four movie releases this year alone – Breaking News in Yuba County, Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi, and the upcoming Swan Song starring Mahershala Ali. On top of the release of the second season of Awkwafina is Nora From Queens. Comedy Central has yet to confirm whether or not they’ll be a third season but even if they don’t, it’s not like her schedule is all that open. She’s playing Scuttle in the highly anticipated live action Little Mermaid movie. She’s voicing another character in a DreamWorks animated film called The Bad Guys, also starring Sam Rockwell and Anthony Ramos. And I’m sure they’re teeing up a Shang-Chi sequel. And there’s also a project in development that was announced just before the pandemic, The Baccarat Machine, based on the true story of Kelly Cheung Yin Sun, the mastermind behind poker champion Phil Ivey’s “edge-sorting” casino run. ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast series did an episode of this back in 2017 and it’s worth a listen and or read this profile of Kelly in Cigar Afficionado here. She is a fascinating character – like her whole sh-t isn’t necessarily about making money, she gets off more on beating casinos. I really, really hope they can make this movie happen.
As for Elliot, he was working on Umbrella Academy season three earlier this year; it will premiere in 2022, no exact date has been announced yet. Like Awkwafina, he’s also involved in several animated projects. But also, it’s been a year for Elliot in different ways. December 1, 2020 is when they announced on Instagram that they are trans. They covered TIME. They were interviewed by Oprah. They went to the Met Gala, their first red carpet since they “arrived at this place in [their] life”. And they signed a first-look deal with UCP to develop scripted and unscripted content. Elliot will be booked and busy too.
