The continued staying power of 2002’s Lilo & Stitch became undeniable over the summer when the live-action reimagining became the highest-grossing Hollywood film among 2025 movies, surpassing the $1 billion mark back in July. When I caught up with the cast of the hit-making movie, I wasn’t expecting to learn about one small difference between the two movies that one original voice actor was happy to see in the live action.
Just days after Lilo & Stitch crossed its box office milestone, CinemaBlend spoke to Maia Kealoha, Sydney Agudong and Tia Carrere at San Diego Comic-Con to do a victory lap for Disney’s latest hit. Carrere, who returned to play Mrs. Kekoa, after being the original voice of Nani, shared this story while gushing over the live-action Lilo and Nani actors. In her words:
[Sydney], your pronunciation's better than mine, 'cause my grandma gave me the wrong words to ['Aloha ‘Oe']. I know, I screwed up. I was supposed to re-record that vocal. I sang it like eight o'clock in the morning one day, we never replaced the vocals. I was like, ‘I didn't do a good job’, but it's my grandma's fault. I literally called my grandma. I said, 'Grandma, What'd you do?’... I didn't verify it.
As Carrere quipped during our interview that left Sydney Agudong especially gasping, she was happy to see “Aloha ‘Oe” sung correctly after the vocal that made the original animated movie apparently had the “wrong words”. As the original Nani shared, her rendition of the song we hear in the movie was a quick take she did for the filmmakers that ended up making the final cut. Carrere hilariously blamed her own grandmother, who gave her the words before she recorded them, but apparently, it wasn’t completely accurate.
It’s a detail that most people don’t even notice, but meant a lot to Carrere, given “Aloha ‘Oe” is a Hawaiian folk song that has become a famous cultural symbol to Hawaiians since Queen "Lydia" Liliʻuokalani wrote it back in 1878. The reason why the song is even in the movie to begin with is thanks to Carrere, who suggested the song be in the film when the filmmakers asked her if there was a specific way Hawaiian characters might say goodbye.
In a prior interview with CinemaBlend, Carrere explained to us that she helped bring a lot of authenticity to the original Lilo & Stitch, from little things Hawaiian locals might say to each other to adding the Pidgin inflection to her and other characters' speech. In our SDCC interview, Carrere had this to say about her Lilo & Stitch co-stars, who brought new shades to their characters through live action:
Just by the nature of who they are, it’s just more realized. I mean, you're stronger. You're more feisty and you go head to head and, like I said, playing the ukulele and singing.
Carrere’s pride for the new actresses behind Lilo & Stitch’s core sisters shone through as she spoke about her first reaction to hearing of the live-action movie. As she shared:
I jumped up and down and said, ‘How do I get on this?’ My first thought, honestly, was 'How are they gonna cast these two girls?' I know that it was a long, hard road to find these two women here. And it's incredible. Like, there must have been thousands of people that they saw for these roles. And they are the perfect Lilo and Nani, and I couldn't say more about them.
It’s so sweet that Tia Carrere got to be part of retelling Lilo & Stitch to a new generation, along with the new Nani perhaps improving on the character in little ways. And now that a sequel is officially on the way, we can’t wait to see how their characters continue to grow.
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