If the multiverse exists, Stephanie Hsu loves to assume there’s a Stephanie out there who operates her own small flea market out of a barn, having grown up rummaging through Salvation Army dollar bins.
Or perhaps she’s on Saturday Night Live with her buddy and classmate Bowen Yang, having persevered through the PBR-fueled, sticky-floored midnight comedy acts that, in our reality, would have turned her away from that route.
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In completely another universe, she may be nothing more than a rock. Hsu dreamt about it before the lockdown when she was juggling eight acts a week in the Broadway musical Be More Chill with Season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. “I was thinking, I just want to go home, cook my own food, and be a rock,” the 31-year-old explains to Bustle.
She is a rock in Everything Everywhere All at Once — and a martial artist, a piata, a salsa performer, and the head of a bagel-worshipping religion, depending on where her character is in the universe at any given time.
Though the film follows Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, a stressed laundry owner lured into an apocalyptic conflict, it is Hsu’s character Joy, Evelyn’s lesbian, rebellious daughter, who is the emotional center of the plot.
It helps that Hsu understands Evelyn and Joy’s complicated and occasionally tense mother-daughter bond. “Trying to get through to your family and failing at every point,” she continues, “is something I feel like many of us have faced before.”
Due to a lack of Asian presence on screen, Hsu’s mother was first skeptical that she could make it in Hollywood. However, the Torrance, California-born actor pursued his dream, studying experimental theater and improv at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts until joining the Off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company.
She never sought to be a celebrity, but the spotlight found her. She made her Broadway debut as Karen in The SpongeBob Musical, then as the lead in Be More Chill, before playing Joel’s new love interest Mei in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
The latter role as Maisel’s first Asian lead forced Hsu’s mother to reconsider her daughter’s professional choice. “I believe she realized how the things we do in this field of storytelling have an influence on a lot of people,” Hsu recalls, recalling how her mother overheard tour bus riders discussing her character Mei.
She was drawn to Everything Everywhere All at Once because it focused on an Asian American family but isn’t only about the “identity of Being Asian, with a capital B large A,” she explains.
Hsu was able to use her skill Rolodex while working on the new film, much like her character does when she goes through a library of possible selves. She collaborated with costume designer Shirley Kurata to create jewelry for Joy out of computer cables, improvised parts of her lines, and wrote a brief song for the film’s 49-song soundtrack.
And, of course, she co-stars with the legendary Yeoh, who also happens to be her mother’s favorite actor. Hsu believes her mother will like seeing her on TV alongside Yeoh, even if some of their sequences are a touch off-kilter. “[Swinging] bloodthirsty sex objects at her favorite actress.” “She’s your daughter,” Hsu explains. “Mom, that’s me.”
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