It’s understandably hard to focus when an unsmiling Leonardo DiCaprio is staring at you. Kpop Demon Hunters singer EJAE reflected on experiencing exactly that while performing the group’s mega-hit “Golden” during the BAFTA Film Awards in February.
“The BAFTAs haunt me,” EJAE said in a recent interview with the Times. “I made mistakes. I cracked a little bit on the high notes. Leonardo DiCaprio was [in the audience] right in front of me and he was not smiling.”
She explained that just before she sang the lyric “born to be” a high note in the song, she looked right at the actor. “That’s what put me off,” she said. “He made me so nervous. It was already so nerve-racking to be in front of all these celebrities, and then I look up and lock eyes with Leonardo DiCaprio? Come on.”
Elsewhere in the interview, EJAE recalled crossing paths with one of the music industry’s biggest power couples, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. “I was at their afterparty and Jay-Z came up to me and said, ‘Hi, my name’s Shawn,’” she said. “I was beyond starstruck. Beyoncé is my idol and she said, ‘You have an incredible voice.’” She added, I asked her, ‘Do you know ‘Golden?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, my girls sing it.’”
EJAE wrote “Golden” alongside Mark Sonnenblick along with several other songs that appear in Kpop Demon Hunters. She also starred as the singing voice of Rumi, a member of fictional K-pop group HUNTR/X. The song won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and brought the trio, which also includes Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, to the BAFTA Film Awards, Brit Awards, Golden Globes, Grammys, and more.
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“I know [this kind of success] happens, I just didn’t think it would happen to me,” EJAE told the Times. “I had no inkling at all that KPop Demon Hunters would be as big as it became. I did think it might be huge because the story was so cool, but you never know. In the past year I’ve lived five lives. It doesn’t stop. Who does this all in one year?”
She added, “It’s still crazy to me. I was a nobody and suddenly I’m a something.”
