Why Everything Everywhere actress Stephanie Hsu deserves more awards this season

LOS ANGELES – Every time Stephanie Hsu thinks she has become used to the reactions to Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), something new manages to throw her for a loop.

And, on a Friday night in January at a West Hollywood hotel bar, it was Steve Buscemi.

“I’m sorry to be so rude,” said the 65-year-old American actor, who sidled up to the table during an interview to say hello to Hsu.

It turned out that Buscemi is a major fan of the hit science-fiction film, in which the Chinese-American actress plays the unhappy daughter of Michelle Yeoh’s multiverse-skipping saviour. He had seen the movie multiple times, including at an actors’ guild screening earlier that evening.

Hsu, 32, is often stopped by people who love Everything Everywhere All At Once, but this was a pinch-me moment that she met with a big grin. Buscemi asked for a picture and the buoyant Hsu leapt out of the booth to pose with him, then returned to her dirty martini. “That was crazy,” she said after he left. “It’s all crazy.”

Although the film came out nearly a year ago, its award season afterlife has proved so potent that Everything Everywhere All At Once has begun to sound less like a title and more like the organising principle of Hsu’s day planner.

On the day she met The New York Times, she had just completed several interviews and a pit stop at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. A few days later, she would attend the Golden Globes, where her co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan and Yeoh were all nominated, and where

Quan and Yeoh won major awards.

Hsu was not nominated for a Globe and, as the ensemble’s least-known member, she has sometimes been left out of the awards conversation, although she did receive a Screen Actors Guild nomination.

Funny and refreshingly honest, Hsu understands that nothing is guaranteed this award season and many may see her as an underdog.

“The elephant in the room,” she said, “is the dark horse of me.”

Still, even if Hsu is not as famous as her veteran co-stars, her presence is no less pivotal. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Hsu plays Joy, who is crestfallen that her mother, a Chinese-American laundromat owner named Evelyn (Yeoh), makes so little effort to understand her.

It is crucial that viewers feel for Joy because audiences soon learn that in every other universe, she is a flashy, universe-collapsing supervillain named Jobu whom Evelyn is charged with defeating.

Hsu drew a map to track how fed-up Joy became the nihilistic Jobu and tried to imbue the baddie with a strong emotional core: Underneath it all, this is a supervillain who wants nothing more than to be embraced by her mother.

The result is a big-screen breakthrough for Hsu, who had been best known for playing Mei Lin on The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (2019 to present), and Broadway roles in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical (2016 to 2017) and Be More Chill (2015 to 2019).

Still, whenever she gets too caught up in award shows and industry attention, she endeavours to remember the often-tearful reactions of the fans who have flagged her down to talk about how much Everything Everywhere All At Once moved them.

“I’m witnessing other people’s humanity in a way that is very alive,” she said, “and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, we did that. We did something that made people start crying even when they think about it’. And that’s crazy. That came from our labour of love.”

This script came to you shortly after you wrapped the third season of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, which you shot alongside Be More Chill. Did you feel ready for it?

That was the first year where I finally admitted to myself that I am an actor. I’ve always been a little bit punk rock – probably in an impostor-syndrome way – where everything always felt like an accident. How did I stumble onto Broadway? How did I stumble onto this TV show? To do a show on top of that, it asked so much of my discipline and rigour that I was like, “Okay, this is what I do”. With that came a lot of responsibility and weight.

Before you had those stage and screen roles, you spent a lot of time doing experimental theatre. Do you think you were rejecting the mainstream because you thought it might reject you?

At the time when I was finishing school and living in New York, those roles were not available in the mainstream. I had no interest in selling myself or just shrinking myself to an inappropriate cameo just so I could say I added one more thing to my resume.

I remember in 2012, I went to a commercial audition and they were like: “Okay, could you do it again, but with a more Asian accent?” And I said: “I’m so sorry, but this role is not for me. I don’t do that and I’m not interested in this part.”

When you came on board Everything Everywhere All At Once, did you think about how the movie would resonate for people who also don’t tend to see themselves on-screen?

I knew the movie was going to be special, but I had no idea it was going to do what it has done. And it’s been really healing for me to hear how many people have been affected by it. So many daughters and mothers have been coming to me crying, saying, “I saw myself in the movie” or “my relationship with my mother is just like that”.

Your directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan said this award season has been emotional for the cast and crew. How have you experienced it?

At the Gotham Awards (in November 2022), American director Todd Field said we have to eradicate the word “best” when we talk about how we value art and I felt that so deeply. But also on the same evening, when Ke won Best Supporting Actor, I stood up so fast and screamed so loud that I almost passed out. Then when we won Best Picture, I couldn’t believe it. I’m not sentimental about this kind of stuff and yet I could not stop crying onstage.

Tell me more about the other highs.

After Jamie Lee Curtis saw the movie at South by Southwest, she took me aside and said: “This year is going to be a total roller coaster for you. Centre yourself.”

I remember thinking: “Jamie, listen, I’m a grown-a** woman and I’ve been around the block. I know how to stay centred.”

But, as the year has unfolded, I’ve realised how little I knew about anything.

So, listen, this ride is amazing, but that is real. We have not transcended this moment, right?

James Hong (who plays Evelyn’s father) started acting at a time when people wouldn’t even say his name, they would literally just call him “Chinaman” and say “get on your mark”.

Michelle waited almost 40 years for her first chance of being No. 1 on the call sheet and Ke left acting for (nearly) 20 years.

As successful as this film has been, the biggest fear on the other side is “What if this is my last chance?” NYTIMES