Pamela Ribon (BFA Acting, ‘97) attended UT to improve her acting skills. However, when a professor encouraged her to rely on a wide range of skills rather than ignoring her natural strength in storytelling, Ribon became set on a wide-ranging creative career path. Since then, she has helped write “Moana,” created two Academy Award nominated films (“My Year of Dicks” and “Nimona”), written best-selling novels and co-hosted a podcast. The Daily Texan spoke with Ribon about her career and involvement in the first “Moana” movie ahead of “Moana 2” releasing this fall.

The Daily Texan: What was your reaction to being involved in a project like “Moana” that became meaningful to so many kids everywhere? 

Pamela Ribon: It’s hard to explain in a way where you can know the feeling because it’s overwhelming and humbling. … The weekend (“Moana”) came out, I took my family to Maui. When we were landing, people were talking about Maui — they meant the island. By the time we were leaving, that movie was sold out in every theater, people were carrying Maui dolls at the airport. When they said Maui they meant the movie (character) because they’d just seen it. It was so weird, and it was very new to me. People want to come and talk to you when they find out you’ve worked on (these movies) because they want to tell the movie it mattered. These families share big, important early moments of their lives together around these films. You see 3-year-olds standing up on a boat screaming, “I am Moana,” and just know (you are) lucky to have anything to do with something that big.

DT: Was there anything from your college experience that prepared you to handle success like that?

PR: The campus life in general, the UT attitude of ‘What starts here changes the world’ and being in a city that’s so different in the state of Texas — you went there to finally feel like you could be yourself for a second. And then hopefully you’re on a campus that says, ‘Well, what is it?’ It’s not going to hand it to you because there’s too many people to do that, so you have to find your own way. UT prepared me for being able to find (my) voice and use it when (it) could pretty easily disappear and someone might not notice.

DT: A lot of your characters have to overcome some sort of awkwardness. What draws you to those awkward characters? 

PR: I’m an awkward character. Moving from a Gen X sensibility of writing to the (current) sensibility of writing, there is a lot more love, understanding and patience for awkwardness — even a celebration of it. It wasn’t that way at all, it was the surest way to be picked upon or the butt of any joke. So, I think what’s interesting is learning how to take the butt of the joke and (use) that person — even if it’s fish because in animation sometimes these are fish. That character trait is actually vulnerability and growth, breaking through to community, acceptance and love. If that’s not the most beautiful part of our humanity, what is?