Lana Condor Shares Her Firsts

I danced for hours and hours and hours

and it got to a point where I was like,

yeah, I can't feel my feet, I'm done.

Hi, I'm Lana Condor and these are my firsts.

[upbeat music]

If my understanding of what a serendipitous experience is,

this might be totally wrong, but I was on the plane

thinking about what opportunity or what project

I would love to be a part of and my first thought was

I would love to be in a romantic comedy.

I quickly wrote that off because I don't really know

any romantic comedies that want an Asian-American

as their lead and then, the day after,

I got the audition for To All the Boys I've Loved Before.

To me, that's serendipitous because it was almost

like I wished it so bad, like, I wanted

to be a part of a rom-com so badly.

I believe in that, though, I believe

in just like manifesting things and wishing it up.

First big career decision.

I'm kinda gonna reword it.

It was my first time where I got really, really close

to a job, I believed that I had gotten it

and I think everyone else did and then when I didn't get it,

it was my first true letdown and I was so upset by it

for a long time and then I got

To All the Boys right after.

Like it was my first really solid learning experience

of like, okay, honestly, you just have to let it go.

So that was my first time like,

really, like, big, big decision to let something go.

The first Netflix show that I binged.

That's a really tricky question.

I've binged The Office a thousand times,

Parks and Rec, Stranger Things.

I binged The 100.

You can binge it all.

My first time traveling abroad, I went to Mexico.

I went to Puerto Vallarta.

It was awesome and I was little,

so I don't remember a lot, but I was there with my parents

and my brother, so I'm assuming it was awesome.

The first time I cooked a fancy meal,

actually the first time I cooked for my long-time boyfriend,

and I cooked Jamaican chicken curry.

It took me, like, for real, maybe 4 1/2 hours.

Like, I cooked the whole turkey and I disassembled it,

put it into the stew, it was incredible,

but it was one of those meals that, like,

by the time it's finished, you're not even hungry.

That's how long it took.

My first audition was a Nickelodeon show

that I don't even know if it got made or whatnot,

but it's called Future Shock

and it was my first audition ever and I was super nervous.

I remember exactly what I was wearing,

this really awesome leather peplum top

and leather pants, and I remember exactly where it was,

the address and everything in L.A.

and that was my first audition ever.

I did not get it, but I got a callback, so I don't know,

then maybe they felt bad for me.

They could sense I was nervous.

My first horseback riding experience was

I think when I was six, I lived on Whidbey Island

and I started taking horseback riding lessons

and I rode a horse named Babe and, actually he was a pony,

and that was my first time on a horse

and then ever since, I've been riding ever since,

and it's my true passion and I love it so much.

I was so little at the time, though,

like when I was six, I was so little

that I could ride the mini ponies.

The barn that we were at had

one little mini pony named Bullwinkle.

It's basically like a big dog, like,

that's how small it was and I would always ride him around.

The first time I was starstruck,

I feel like this is a two-part question.

The first time was with David Beckham.

I was shopping at Whole Foods, as one does,

and I saw him and so I stalked him through the Whole Foods.

He totally could sense it because then

when he went up to the cash register,

he liked turned around and he was like,

So, like, do you want a picture?

and I was like, yes!

And now I get it 'cause like,

I was recently stalked through a grocery store

and it takes a lot of balls

to do the stalking of someone that you love

and then now, I forever get starstruck by The Rock.

Always.

I tweet The Rock.

I have a video of The Rock saying hi to me,

that's like how big of a fan I am.

I think he knows that I like, stalk him from online.

[laughing] He could sing, he could dance, he's charming,

he has a great physique, he's The Rock.

My first memory of home.

I was really little, I think three or four,

I was living in Chicago.

I was one of those babies that was always up at night,

so I would creep around at night.

I had gotten up out of bed and I walked down the stairs

and I fell asleep in the coatroom closet

and my parents had a party and then everyone left

and my parents walked into the coatroom

and I was there on the floor and it scared

the heck out of them and therefore, I was scared,

I was like [gasping] and that was my first memory.

My first Christmas memory was in the same house

in Andersonville in Chicago.

I remember it vividly because my brother got

one of those electric fire trucks with the remotes

and I got my first dollhouse and it was awesome

and I still have my dollhouse.

I believed in Santa for a long time.

I still believe in Santa.

My first movie premiere, X-Men: Apocalypse in London.

That was crazy.

The carpet was like a football field long.

It was my first time to any

of these events and my first premiere.

It was also my first movie and I was just auditioning

on the sly so none of my friends knew

that I was doing that, but I would leave school

all the time to audition and I'd always say

that I would have a doctor's appointment.

It was actually great because once I actually

booked X-Men, the principal was super happy

because she thought that I was really sick.

But yeah, I was in high school and they called me

and they asked me if I was around anyone

and I was like, what do you mean?

Yes, I'm around everyone I've ever known in my life.

This is high school.

They were like, Oh, would you mind finding a quiet place,

so I just walked out of the school

and I was standing underneath the American flag.

My agent at the time told me that I booked it.

That was like the craziest experience of my life

because I wasn't allowed to say anything

until the press release came out.

So I held that in for, I think, a couple months.

I couldn't tell any of my friends,

so I had to go right back into school,

knowing I had just booked my first job,

that happened to be X-Men,

one of the greatest franchises that I love

and I had to sit there and pretend like nothing happened.

One of my greatest acting feats yet.

The first time I fell in love with ballet was sixth grade

and I was dancing at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York.

It was such an awesome time, it was really, really fun

and the way that you're taught in ballet,

it's so meticulous and everything is perfect.

When I was growing up, that structure kinda really helped

my work ethic now and I think that's something that I loved.

I loved doing partners, so that was always really fun

and makes you feel kind of like a princess

and you're being thrown around and lifted and twirling.

The first time I came to L.A. was

when I was a sophomore in high school.

My dad and my mom and I moved from New York.

He got a new job and so I started my high school

as a sophomore, so I transferred over

and that was my first time.

The one question my parents said to me was like,

Are you sure you wanna leave New York?

because New York is amazing.

I was like, the one place I will leave New York

for is L.A. because of the weather.

It's November, you guys, and it is incredibly hot.

The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning

was I was shooting the cover of Teen Vogue.

You guys, you don't know how big of a deal this is for me

because I've been reading Teen Vogue

since like, I could read and I just absolutely love it

and this has been the greatest opportunity.

When I heard that had the opportunity to shoot the cover,

I freaked out, and then I called my mom

and was crying, so this is a really big deal.

So yeah, that was my first thought.

The first time I had a truly spooky experience.

[laughing] I was staying, it was actually pretty recent,

it was like within the last year.

I was staying at the Hotel Roosevelt.

It is kind of like, notoriously, like,

people say it's haunted, but I don't really know

if that's true until now.

I got in super late at night and I was really, really tired

and they had put me in this really beautiful hotel room

and I open up the door and I remember the first thing

that hit me was that the hotel room was very, very cold

and it smelt kind of like moldy

and I said, that's so weird because this is

a really nice hotel, it's weird that this hotel room

would smell, but I was like, whatever,

but I, like, looked behind the curtains

and like, look at everything

and make sure everything looks good.

Everything looked great, good.

So then I went to bed and throughout the night,

I kept waking up, feeling like there was someone,

like a person, standing, watching at the corner of my bed.

And then I woke up the next morning

and I was like, thank god, I'm awake,

maybe it was just like those scary things

that happen in the night, whatever.

So I ordered breakfast and I'm sitting,

FaceTiming my boyfriend and I look forward

and one of the paintings hung up

on the wall was ripped in half.

I distinctly remember that not being the case

when I first checked in and so I get up

and I walk to the painting and I kinda look

at the painting and it is a depiction

of a demon standing on skulls.

What hotel decides that that is their go-to of artwork?

And I almost touched it to put it back up

and I was like, wait, just in case,

I'm not gonna touch it, so I didn't touch it,

but I asked my friend who was staying at the hotel room

if I could stay in her room because I was so scared.

So I stayed in her room that very night.

Like every hour I would wake up

'cause I would think I would hear footsteps

going into the bathroom, but every single time,

I would look over and she would be in her bed.

So, needless to say, I checked out at like,

literally 4:00 a.m. and I was like,

I was going to a shoot, and I was like,

that's it, nope, no, this was the first time

I was hours early to a shoot 'cause I could not be

a part of it, so I, like that scared

the living crap out of me.

[upbeat music]