Stephanie Hsu Clears the Air About Jamie Lee Curtis’ Oscar Win

This past awards season, Everything Everywhere All at Once was the little engine that could — an A24 immigrant-family saga with a mostly Asian cast made for around $20 million going up against studio titans like Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick. Before long, the underdog became the top dog, as the Daniels’ multiverse-spanning, mind-melting sci-fi journey won seven Academy Awards out of eleven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (for Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), and Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis). And yet, the film’s online legion of ride-or-die fans were more than a little disappointed that Stephanie Hsu, the heart of the film who so captivatingly embodied Yeoh’s detached, universe-endangering daughter, lost to her co-star Curtis.

When Rolling Stone sat down with the four leads of the hilarious road comedy Joy Ride to discuss everything from crushing stereotypes and shoving cocaine up one’s butt to their go-for-broke rendition of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” (while cosplaying as a K-pop group, no less), we asked Hsu about Everything Everywhere’s surreal road to the Oscars and that fateful evening.

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“There were some high-highs and low-lows,” she said. “We started the whole ride by premiering at SXSW. The first film festival back after Covid, two years after we had wrapped. Insane. I feel grateful for all the highs and lows, because it showed me — even though on the other side we swept the Oscars, and I was so lucky to get a nomination — I remember the first big event we went to, nobody knew who we were at all. And the movie had already done really well. Nobody knew and nobody cared. I love those moments because they remind you that one day you’re nobody, and one day you’re somebody, and one day you’re nobody again. That’s a really grounding reality check.”

By the way, she remains incredibly grateful for her (and the film’s) fans, who rallied behind them online, and appreciated their unwavering support.

“I think I’ve never really understood what it means to have fans, and I really felt the abstract presence of the internet in my life last year where I felt people really wanting me to get my flowers and support me,” she explained. “[They] saw me and saw the work that I did and wanted to celebrate that. That really meant a lot to me because that can be hard to let in for myself. It’s easy to tuck away from the light because you’re like, ‘Oh, this is not a big deal.’”

But the Oscar-nominated Hsu, who also popped up in this year’s acclaimed Peacock series Poker Face, reunited with several of her Everything Everywhere co-stars in the Disney+ series American Born Chinese, and will next appear in the comedy film Shortcomings, would also like to clear the air about her feelings toward co-star Jamie Lee Curtis’ Oscar win.

“And for the record: I fucking die-hard-love Jamie Lee Curtis. I am so fucking happy for her. She, like, goes to bed with that Oscar, and I’m so fucking happy she does,” said Hsu. “And I’m so grateful for all the people fighting for me, but let it be known that I am joyfully at peace.”

“Also, if it weren’t for Jamie, I don’t think that all of us would have been able to lean in as hard as we did. Almost no other Asian people had been nominated. Ke [Huy Quan] even quit the business. We had that feeling before we really started to gain momentum where we were like, ‘This feels impossible, and we’re embarrassed that we even believe we’re worthy of being celebrated, because it feels so unfamiliar to our bodies,’ and Jamie was the one who was like, ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment. You never know if something is gonna land, and if this lands, this is going to change people’s lives. Let’s link arms and take this all in.’”

Just days after its Oscar wins, and almost a year to the day that Everything Everywhere All at Once debuted there, Joy Ride premiered at SXSW to a theater howling with laughter (none louder than that of Seth Rogen, one of the film’s producers who sat in my row).

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