Rynia Kando learned she could impersonate the high-pitched gibberish of the Minions in seventh grade, performing it for her friend in line at lunch to make her laugh.
More than a decade later, Kando, now 26, was crowned โthe best Minionese performer in this theater, and possibly the internet and the entire worldโ at the June 28 premiere of โMinions & Monstersโ in Los Angeles.
โMinionese, it comes to you. Itโs in your heart,โ Kando tells TODAY.com about her big win.
Before the debut of the upcoming animated film โ the third installment in the โDespicable Meโ spinoff franchise of โMinionsโ movies โ attendees were treated to a pre-show singing competition, where four people performed โMinioneseโ versions of hit songs.
Minionese refers to the nonsensical, fast-spoken, nasally language of the Minions, cartoon characters first introduced in 2010โs โDespicable Me.โ Minions are known for their tiny yellow bodies, blue overalls and varying numbers of eyes and eyeglasses.
When Kando, contestant No. 4 as seen in clips from the now-viral singing contest, took the mic for her performance, the first recognizable word was โbanana.โ
Kando performed a Minion-ized version of The Jackson 5โs โIโll Be There.โ The other entrants were Faith Elizabeth, who performed Olivia Rodrigoโs โDrop Dead,โ Ella Martin, who crooned Queenโs โBohemian Rhapsodyโ and Sophia Mapua, who sang Bruno Marsโ โVersace on the Floor.โ
โI recognized a couple of the girls. Iโve actually seen their videos online. Theyโre so talented and awesome. They were so sweet, to finally meet them in real-life,โ Kando says. โI guess weโre a tight-knit community.โ
Kando says โIโll Be Thereโ was the first song she thought of. She had no back-up option.
โIn the email, it was like, you should do a popular song that the audience will know,โ Kando says. โI know thereโs radio hits that are popular right now, but I donโt care.โ
Kando, an impressionist and content creator with more than 2 million TikTok followers, found out she was invited to the premiere within 48 hours of getting up on stage to sing.
โIโm going to be very honest, I barely got to practice,โ she says. โWe practiced a couple hours before on stage and that went well. That was really cool, but I didnโt really get to sit there and practice.โ
Kando, whoโs Minion impressions online go as far back as 2023, says her trick to speaking Minionese on the fly is to add Spanish words.
โThatโs the hack because when I hear Minions speak, Iโm like, โOh, thatโs Spanish,โโ she says.
(The co-creator and voice of the Minions, Pierre Coffin has said that Minionese is actually a โa mixture of all the languages of the world,โ per NBC Insider.)
Otherwise, her advice for re-creating the Minions language is to โjust make noises.โ
โJust make random sounds, random little syllables and itโll sound like a Minion,โ she says, adding that the pitch and tone comes from speaking nasally and from the back of her throat. โMake them short, make them funny, try to make them rhyme.โ
The winner of the singing contest was chosen by the audience screaming out the number of the favorite contestant.
โI was on stage … and I kept hearing โfour,โ and me and the other contestants were talking, and I was like, โDid they say more or four?โโ Kando recalls.
Actor Bobby Moynihan, one of the voice actors in โMinions & Monsters,โ finally announced Kando as the winner.
โBanana!โ she shouted into her mic as she hoisted the Golden Banana trophy overhead.
On social media, Kando performs impressions for a host of other celebrity figures and cartoon characters, from Shakira to Yoshi. Her favorite impressions are, in order, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Coolidge and Christina Aguilera. The most difficult is Kourtney Kardashian.
Her ultimate dream is to perform onstage in some capacity, like โSaturday Night Live,โ Broadway or โanything with singing, acting, voice acting โ Iโll take it,โ she says.
For now, sheโll continue to post on social media.
โI built a following on social media before this, but Iโve never seen craziness like this,โ she says. โI always say, before anything, my goal is to make a person laugh, like genuinely laugh. I just want to entertain people.โ