Geek E. Girl Roles for Hanna Mae Lee
Hana Mae Lee’s birthday is today and while she’s best known as the incredibly soft spoken yet powerful beatboxer Lilly in Pitch Perfect, the real Hana Mae is a bona fide badass and funny as hell. To celebrate her birthday, we’ve created a wish list of literary roles that we’d love to see Hana Mae Lee play. Listen up, Hollywood. We’ve got some big plans.
Patsy Walker in Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat by Kate Leth and Brittney Williams
Kate Leth and Brittney Williams’ Patsy Walker is an incredible friend, a whip smart superhero, and resilient as all get out. We’d love to see Hana Mae Lee give life to this new Patsy Walker – a Patsy who’s fresh out of school and navigating the ins and outs of having a roommate, working in retail, and, oh yeah, capturing bad guys. Hana Mae’s natural sense of humor makes her a perfect fit for the role. And we cannot wait to see her hanging out with her all female superhero crew, including The Hulk, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez, and Thor. Forget every other Hollywood blockbuster. This is the superhero movie we need.
Erin Tieng in Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Chris Chiang
Stranger Things fans would absolutely love a Paper Girls movie and Hana Mae Lee would be a perfect Erin Tieng. In fact, all Stranger Things fans should run to their local comic book store immediately because this comic will fill the Demogorgon shaped hole in your heart. Erin Tieng – the Erin from 2016, that is – is the complex female protagonist we desperately need in sci-fi. She’s faced with her twelve-year-old self, plus a double from another timeline entirely. It’s enough to make your head spin, but Erin is cool and collected, despite her world being turned entirely upside down. At only 29 years old, Hana Mae Lee would need to age into the role a bit. But we know how slow things can move in Hollywood. When it comes time for a Paper Girls screen adaptation, we want Hana Mae Lee to be considered for the role first.
Reagan in Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
We’ve been lobbying for a Rainbow Rowell movie for quite a while and if Fangirl made it to the big screen know the perfect actor to play the headstrong Reagan. Hana Mae Lee made it clear in Pitch Perfect that she doesn’t need to play the lead in order to steal the scene. Reagan commands the dorm room every time she occupies it and we’d love to see that translated onto the screen by Hana Mae Lee. Reagan is a terrific friend – the perfect balance of opinionated and kind. We’re excited just thinking about her playing opposite introverted Cath, urging her out of her shell.
Jane in Re Jane by Patricia Park
While Hana Mae Lee is a master of high jinx and big laughs, we’re eager to see her stretch herself as the Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American young woman living in New York City just after the dot com bubble burst. Unable to find work in finance, Jane is hired to be a nanny for a wealthy Brooklyn couple. It’s a modern-day adaptation of Jane Eyre that has Hana Mae Lee’s name all over it. Oh, Hollywood! Make this incredible book into a movie as soon as humanly possible.
Meiko Maki in Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro
With the state of today’s politics, it’s a wonder we don’t wake up on Bitch Planet every day. In this feminist sci-fi comic, women are sent to another planet for being “noncompliant.” And that definition of compliance changes each day – dictated by the men who run the government. Meiko Maki is one of the incredible inhabitants of Bitch Planet, struggling to survive against all odds. We’d love to see Hana Mae Lee bring the character to life on screen – preferably in a multi-season television series because this story deserves to take up as much space as possible.
