Auli’i Cravalho is not here for your boxed-in labels, thank you very much. You can keep your neat little pigeonholes far away from her menagerie of big, animated feelings. “It is so hard to just be you,” she sighs, leaning into a topic she’s been hacking away at since she first gave Moana her unstoppable voice. This time she’s doing it in Lulu Is a Rhinoceros, an Apple TV+ kid’s movie that’s basically an open letter to everyone telling you you’re not enough of whatever it is you are.
“When Lulu wakes up in the morning, she knows exactly who she is,” Cravalho says, as if the rest of us should be so lucky. “It’s the outside forces telling her that she should be something else that truly gets to her.”
It doesn’t hurt that Lulu has some musical pep talks ready to go — songs with titles like Rhinoproof and The Perfect You is You. “These are certainly easily digestible songs but songs that have a lot of heart to them,” she says. And the soundtrack is stacked: Leland of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame worked on it, alongside Allison Flom — the daughter half of the father-daughter duo who wrote the original book. “I’m hoping they drop the album soon, ’cause I’m trying to listen to it on repeat,” Cravalho confesses, like she’s not the one singing half of it.
If you think she might be content voicing plucky, kind-hearted animated animals forever, don’t bet on it. “Let me do a character voice every now and again, you know?” she pleads. “Cast me as like a villain. I don’t know, I’ll work with a voice!” But she’s not exactly sitting idle — she just finished a run in Cabaret with Adam Lambert, throwing down hard against fascism eight shows a week. “Art is oftentimes the best act of rebellion and of joy,” she says. Lulu is apparently both.
Cravalho’s been moonlighting as a New Yorker too, soaking up that elusive sliver of spring before the whole city turns into a wet oven. “This was the New York I was promised,” she laughs. Ask again in August. She’s also quietly plotting her takeover from behind the scenes, producing Moana projects, The Queen’s Flowers, and more: “I don’t have to be in everything. If I can help tell a story from behind the scenes, that makes me just as happy.”
But for now, it’s all about Lulu — the rhinoceros who knows exactly who she is. “Meeting great friends along the way and trusting in that knowledge that I am me and that is the best person to be,” Cravalho says, as if that should be the easiest thing in the world. If only the rest of us could keep up.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
