Auli’i Cravalho Is More Than a Disney Princess
The New York Times
“Moana” made her a breakout star. Now Cravalho, at 24, is back in the sequel, while also making her Broadway debut and embracing edgier parts.
On a chilly November evening, wearing a light leather jacket and a scarf, Auli’i Cravalho was freezing as she plunged through a pair of gleaming doors into a candlelit bar in Midtown Manhattan.
“I do not know how people layer here — I’m in total awe,” said Cravalho, who had just come from a photo shoot at a park on the Lower East Side. Like the plucky young heroine she voices in Disney’s “Moana” films — the sequel, “Moana 2,” hits theaters on Wednesday — Cravalho grew up in a tropical climate, in Kohala, Hawaii.
But recently she had been living in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, with her partner and her best friend, while starring in the Broadway revival of “Cabaret.” Cravalho plays the singer Sally Bowles in the John Kander and Fred Ebb musical about a Berlin nightclub during the rise of fascism.
That night would be her first back in the show after sitting out a few performances after she “had come this close to vocal hemorrhaging.”
“I have a newfound respect for the leads of these musicals, because my gosh, it is tough,” said Cravalho, 24, whose name is pronounced owl-LEE-ee cruh-VAL-yo. It had been a whirlwind few weeks, but she was gregarious as she sipped tea poured from a miniature teapot.
In addition to performing an emotionally demanding role seven times a week, there were promotional appearances for “Moana 2,” the follow-up to the 2016 Polynesian animated adventure — a global phenomenon that was the most-streamed movie on any U.S. platform last year, according to Nielsen.
