Since Everything Everywhere All At Once was among the best movies of 2022, and awards season is in full swing, the movie remains high in conversation on the road to the Oscars. And, as Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis have been collecting in performance nominations and wins, one underrated performance has continued to be Stephanie Hsu’s role as Joy and Jobu Tupaki. While Hsu is certainly getting recognized for her role in The Daniels’ film, she recently spoke to getting misidentified on red carpets and her fears going forward.
Amidst Hsu being stopped by Reservoir Dogs’ Steve Buscemi, who asked her for a picture after telling her he was a fan of Everything Everywhere All At Once so much that he’d caught the film multiple times. Hsu spoke to The New York Times about her experience in Hollywood, saying this:
This industry is weird. You have moments like the one we just had with Steve Buscemi, and then you also have moments where you walk on a carpet and people are like, ‘Lana Condor, Lana Condor!’ It was just once, but it was very pronounced. In everybody’s defense, my mom also thinks I look like Lana Condor: She sent me a picture of Lana Condor a year ago and was like, ‘You look like this woman.’
Stephanie Hsu understood the comparisons between herself and Lana Condor, who has brought diversity to rom-coms with the All The Boys movies, but she also is very much aware of the prevalent racism she and other Asians continue to deal with today. As she continued:
But after the Lana Condor thing happened, we were at a screening in New York, and a bunch of people kept going up to my publicist and the Daniels’ publicist, who are both Asian, and they were like, ‘Congratulations, your performance is incredible.’ And they were like, ‘Huh?’
The 32-year-old found roles in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical before playing Joy, the daughter of Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan’s Evelyn and Waymond Wang, who is just looking for acceptance in one universe, whereas in another she becomes a multiverse-jumping villain as a result of her internal pain. Everything Everywhere All At Once is an important film for Asian representation, not only for Hsu, but the many moviegoers who have come up to her to say the “saw myself in the movie” or draw comparisons between their own families. As Hsu also explained:
So listen, this ride is amazing, but that is real. We have not transcended this moment, right? James Hong [who plays Yeoh’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?’
Hsu said these words just ahead of Everything Everywhere All At Once being among Tuesday night’s 2023 Golden Globe winners. The actress was seen during the telecast in tears as Michelle Yeoh accepted her first major award of her career for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical Comedy over actresses Margot Robbie, Emma Thompson, Lesley Manville and Anya Taylor-Joy.
During Yeoh’s speech, the actress spoke to the struggles she dealt with throughout her career following their co-star Ke Huay Quan also getting up on stage for the Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture award. Quan shared that for decades he thought he’d never get to outdo his child self, who starred in the second Indiana Jones movie and The Goonies. Look out for Hsu’s emotional reaction during Yeoh’s Golden Globes speech:
Check out how you can stream Everything Everywhere All At Once as awards season continues. Hsu was just nominated for a SAG award among other recognition this year. Next, the actress will join Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huay Quan in the upcoming book adaptation American Born Chinese, set to hit Disney+ this year.
