Drag Race winner Sasha Colby spoke to Auli'i Cravalho about live-action Moana: 'Would be a dream' to join

Sasha Colby is ready to ride the waves of success from RuPaul's Drag Race all the way to the big screen.

Just over one year after winning season 15 of the MTV reality competition series, the Hawaiian drag superstar tells Entertainment Weekly she wants to represent her culture in other projects. When asked about past fan-fueled social media posts calling for her to star as Te Fiti in Disney's upcoming live-action Moana movie, the performer and trans activist reveals she's spoken to OG voice actress and producer Auli'i Cravalho about the film.

"I'd love to be in anything of that caliber representing my culture. I got to meet the producers and Auli'i Cravalho, who's the voice of Moana, and she's actually an executive producer for the live-action and Moana 2," Sasha tells EW backstage at a recent performance in Pittsburgh, Pa. "Being able to work with them would be amazing to be part of it. Hopefully. We'll see!"

Sasha says she met Cravalho — who also recently starred in Paramount's Mean Girls musical film — in Los Angeles in May, when they participated in a panel presentation about Pacific Islander women in entertainment.

While there, Sasha says they "talked about the new Moana" and the live-action adaptation of the 2016 animated hit's importance in the Hollywood landscape.

"They're definitely wanting to make it as Polynesian and Pacific as possible," Sasha observes. "It would be a dream to be able to be in such a big caliber movie that represents my Polynesian culture."

EW has reached out to Disney for more information.

Adapted from the studio's Oscar-nominated blockbuster animated film, the first Moana movie followed a young girl who leaves her island home in the Pacific on a seafaring journey to right the release of a powerful curse inadvertently unleashed by a demigod named Maui (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who will reprise the role in the live-action version).

Catherine Laga‘aia will take over for Cravalho in the live edition, with the 17-year-old Australian previously expressing her excitement over joining the film.

“I’m really excited to embrace this character because Moana is one of my favorites,” Laga’aia said in a June press release. “My grandfather comes from Fa‘aala, Palauli, in Savai‘i. And my grandmother is from Leulumoega Tuai on the main island of ‘Upolu in Samoa. I’m honored to have an opportunity to celebrate Samoa and all Pacific Island peoples, and to represent young girls who look like me.”

In her first interview with EW published in 2023, Sasha said that her Hawaiian heritage and trans identity were intertwined in a spiritual way that related to the history of the culture, too.

"I feel like that connected me with my ancestors, my culture, and understanding the third sex that was common in Hawaiian practice and culture," she said at the time. "There was a space for queer people. The men and women would go to war to fight against different tribes. But, they left all the kids with all the Māhūs, which is all the queer people, because what is more divine and who can understand both genders than someone who flows between that? I always felt a connection to that."

Elsewhere in her recent conversation with EW, Sasha invokes another Disney character as she explains the inspiration for her jaw-dropping step-down look from April's RuPaul's Drag Race season 16 finale, which she wore as she passed down the crown to her successor, Nymphia Wind.

"Ariel, when she's coming out of the water!" Sasha says of one of her muses for the dress, a cascading gown glistening with jewels — including a pair of earrings that dripped across her chest and doubled as a bra. "Very Birth of Venus, galactic marine goddess!"

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As for her future on the small screen, Sasha says she's not quite ready for another all-winners edition of Drag Race just yet — but she'll get there, perhaps after she finishes tours in South America and the U.K. later this year, as well as a 2025 edition of her Stripped tour that she's reviving and adding more dates to.

"Let's wait, let's get a few more years. I would love to," she says. When EW poses the theory that she and her good friend and fellow Drag Race winner Sasha Velour might compete together, she laughs and predicts: "Hopefully we'd make a Sasha alliance. May the best Sasha win. Sasha Squared? It's everything. I feel our natal charts syncing up."