Tia Carrere became an early ’90s icon with her role as Cassandra, Mike Myers’ rocker-chick love interest (and the inspiration for hilarious epithets like “Babe-raham Lincoln”) in Wayne’s World, and over the course of a four-decade career, which began when she was improbably discovered in a hometown grocery store (“Isn’t that crazy?” she says with a laugh), the multitalented actress and musician has been in everything from action-packed blockbusters like Rising Sun and True Lies to family fare like Lilo & Stitch and its spinoffs.
In the original 2002 Lilo & Stitch, Carrere, who also starred in TV shows like Relic Hunter and AJ and the Queen, played Nani, Lilo’s older sister and guardian, and as a native Hawaiian, she brought a rare authenticity to the role and her songs. Twenty-three years later, Carrere is coming back for the highly anticipated live-action animated remake, in theaters May 23, in a new part as Mrs. Kekoa, a social worker.
Carrere sat down with First for Women to discuss revisiting the beloved Disney movie, her Grammy-winning music career, the enduring appeal of Wayne’s World and much more.
First for Women: What has it been like returning to the world of ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ and what was it like being part of the original film?
Tia Carrere: Lilo & Stitch holds a special place in my heart. I was involved in a very unusual way, because I got to speak with [writers and directors] Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois as they were creating the characters and the background.
Because I was born and raised in Hawaii, they asked me about how I would say things and what the culture of Hawaii was like. I told them that if you go to Hawaii, you know that there’s a certain patois and a pidgin English that’s sing-songy. If you’re from there, you know what it sounds like, and if somebody’s trying to approximate it and they’re not from there, it’s difficult to infuse it into their speech. It was great to get to share that and do all these little things to put my mark on the character.
Coming back to do the new film, I was in Hawaii with [director] Dean Fleischer Camp and he was taking us on a tour and saying, “This is the house where Lilo and Nani live, and here’s the hammock where you sing ‘Aloha ‘Oe,’” and I went, “Aw, that was my idea!” And he goes, “That’s right! I remember reading that.” So there’s a legacy even for the director himself based on what I helped create 23 years ago, when I first told the directors about this song of love and farewell written by [the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom] Queen Liliʻuokalani, and said that would be the perfect song to sing to my sister to say goodbye.
They’ve always been so specific in telling the story. I had dinner with Chris and Dean when they were still drawing backgrounds, and they had just come back from Kauai and were drawing the houses. They showed it to me, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that looks exactly like the plantation homes all around Hawaii.” They took a trip there just to get all the backgrounds, and I talked to them at length about what it was like growing up there. It was great getting to do that over 20 years ago, and now getting to see it come to life again—even with a new director, it still has that legacy of the fingerprints that I put on the character, and I love it.
FFW: You sing Hawaiian songs in ‘Lilo & Stitch’ and have released multiple albums in the genre. What draws you to this music, and what has your journey with it been like?
TC: I was born and raised in Honolulu and my friend [Hawaiian musician and composer] Daniel Ho went to the all-boys Catholic school while I went to the all-girls Catholic school, and we met in jazz orchestra. I was a vocalist, and he did the charts for the whole orchestra.
We started playing music together back then, and we later decided to collaborate on our first record of all of our favorite songs from childhood. He did all the original music, including a song about Spam, which is one of our favorite things to eat in Hawaii—it’s still a guilty pleasure, and I have some in my cabinet right now! We won a Grammy for that record and then had another record that was nominated, and with our fourth record, we won our second Grammy. We’ve toured all over the U.S. and are hoping to go on an international tour one of these days.
Music has always been a big part of my life, and the lyrics and the open vowels of the Hawaiian language are so beautiful to sing. It just resonates in your heart, and it feels like nothing else.
FFW: You recently passed the milestone of four decades in the entertainment industry. What are some of the changes you’ve seen over the years?
TC: I moved to L.A. in October of 1984, and it was really something back then, because there was no “Me Too” movement and no HR department to complain to. If some creepy actor or producer came onto you on set, you’d have to just punch them in the arm and act like one of the guys, which was unfortunate.
Now, women have come together and said, “No more. We’re not going to put up with this,” and we’ve got each other’s backs. Back then, you’d have another woman saying, “Come on, he’s just a funny old guy.” We’ve made great strides in women standing up for each other and speaking out and saying the hard stuff since the ’80s. I love working with younger actresses because they’re very clear about who they are and they know their power.
In terms of representation and diversity, there was nobody that looked like me when I came here. My old modeling agent—rest her soul—gave me a shot, but it was very hard, and the marketplace for TV shows and movies with Asian characters was few and far between. I’d seen a couple of nurses on M*A*S*H that looked sort of like me, but that was pretty much it. It was great when General Hospital came up and had an Asian storyline, and my first big, nationwide role was Jade Soong on the show in 1985.
FFW: What was your soap opera experience like?
TC: Working on a soap opera, it’s key to learn dialogue very quickly. My brain synapses fired like mad because when you’re in the frontrunner story, you have to memorize 30 or 40 pages a day, and you’re shooting an hour-long episode daily. For other TV shows and movies, you can shoot that amount in a month. You have to develop really fast reflexes. It was baptism by fire, but it was a great learning space for me, and that skill of learning lines quickly and having a good sense of where dialogue’s going has never left.
FFW: You became a pop culture fixture as Cassandra in ‘Wayne’s World.’ Over 30 years later, what’s your take on the movie and its legacy?
TC: Wayne’s World was the movie that changed my life. It was incredible to come up at that time, and thank God that Mike Myers wrote my role as an Asian character. I always joke that it could have otherwise gone to Cameron Diaz or Drew Barrymore, but I auditioned a number of times, and I sang and told them I had been in rock bands when I was younger, and I think that helped. I was able to identify with the character in a realistic way.
It was the tiniest movie that Paramount shot that year. It was low-budget, and we only had a few takes of each scene. Nobody knew what they had, since it was still pretty untested ground for an SNL sketch to become a film. We were running by the seat of our pants, and it was incredible to see the phenomenon that it became, but nobody expected it. It was really a pop culture moment.
Cassandra is tough. She kicks butt, and she demands what’s rightfully hers. I love that she’s not the butt of the joke, and instead he’s the butt of the joke since Mike is learning my language and doing it so poorly, but I think it’s adorable. They really threaded the needle nicely where yeah, it’s a funny gag with me having an accent and speaking another language and then rocking out, but it was also empowering. It was a powerful young female role, and I think a lot of women responded to it because she was unapologetically her own person. I love Cassandra.
FFW: Do you have nostalgia for that era?
TC: I was actually just rocking my Madonna look, with a ponytail on top of my head with a bow, and a mesh shirt with a tank top over it and a leather jacket. I’m so enamored with her early looks.
I also still have that red lace dress I wore in Wayne’s World. It’s crazy. It should be in a museum. It’s from a store called Trashy Lingerie. I still shop there. It’s in West Hollywood, and they make the most magnificent Halloween costumes. I had them make my gown for me for the AJ and the Queen premiere.
FFW: Is there any advice you wish you could’ve given yourself at the beginning of your career?
TC: I would tell my younger self to know what is right for you and what is wrong for you, and don’t be afraid to tell people. In Hollywood you can zig and you can zag, but only you know what brings joy in your heart. Only you know what doesn’t feel right and what doesn’t resonate. You can feel it, so follow that small voice inside of you, because a lot of times, that’s all you have in the moment.
FFW: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
TC: Sean Connery gave me a great piece of advice when I worked with him on Rising Sun. He said, “When you walk into a room with your head held high and your shoulders thrown back, you look like you belong.” Walk in with confidence. Own the room. Say hello to everyone and make eye contact. He had this posture, and the way he entered a room was incredible. He would just walk in, and there was a moment of silence, like, “Wow, a legend has entered the room.” It was really something to see.
FFW: Do you have any dream projects on the horizon?
TC: My dream project hasn’t been given to me on a silver platter, so I’m writing it and making it myself. I’m working on writing and producing a small indie movie to direct and star in. I would love to see it at Sundance. It’s about how tough it is being a local person in Hawaii and making ends meet. It’s a heavy acting job, and there’s also going to be some singing in it. I just filmed a scene from it, and it looks great, so I’m very excited to do this.
I’m a very social person, and it’s hard to sit down in a room and just write, write, write. It’s completely different from acting, and you have to have discipline to do that. It’s hard, but I’m almost all the way through, and I have the whole story, so I just have to get it down in the final draft.
