Stephanie Hsu feels at peace with the multiverse

In early 2020, a little before decorative paper lanterns and red envelopes would line storefronts and restaurants across Asian ethnoburbs, Stephanie Hsu and the cast and crew of Everything Everywhere All at Once gathered for a traditional Lunar New Year blessing ceremony.

Two whole roasted suckling pigs and a selection of fresh fruit neatly lined a table covered in red cloth; nearby, incense sticks. The intention of the ritual, led by director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schneinert (a.k.a. the Daniels), was to manifest good juju for production, which was set to commence filming shortly in Simi Valley, a California city 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, in, ironically, an old accounting firm that had gone under.

Three years later, around the same general time frame of that auspicious ritual, Hsu, 32, is assembling lox, thinly sliced onions, and other accoutrements onto a piece of toast (not a bagel, sorry) on a cloudless Valentine's morning in West Hollywood. A24 released Everything Everywhere into the universe about a year ago, and Hsu has since been nominated for her first Academy Award for her dual role as Joy Wang/Jobu Tupaki. But more on that powerhouse performance later.

The journey thus far, beginning with that sacred blessing ceremony several years ago, has been "surreal," Hsu marvels.

Allyson Riggs/A24 Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, and James Hong in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once.'

"What's really beautiful, and this is so Chinese people, [is] we are so spiritual," Hsu says. "We're a very witchy bunch, actually. They wouldn't call it witchy in our culture, but we're very spiritual. I really do feel like our movie is blessed in this weird synchronistic, beautiful, magical way. Because no one could have possibly imagined our story and our movie could do what it's done. It's a testament to the Daniels. We made this impossible movie in 38 days [with] $14.3 million, which is unheard of for this scale of a film. Everybody brought their best because they believed in it and they were in a supportive environment to do their best work."

It also helps when Michelle Yeoh is a costar.

The veteran film star, who has commanded screens for the past three decades, leads the film as Wang matriarch Evelyn. A multiverse-hopping meditation on family and intergenerational trauma, the sci-fi epic also stars former child actor Ke Huy Quan (in a triumphant Hollywood comeback), Jamie Lee Curtis, and the legendary James Hong. In what very much feels like a celebration of Yeoh's grandiose career, the film manages to infuse masterful callbacks to her filmography.

"We all signed on because Michelle is Michelle," Hsu says. "She completely surrendered to the process without any ego." But while Yeoh — an action tour de force who has kicked Jackie Chan's butt, by the way — was infiltrating drug cartels in Supercop, sprinting across rooftops in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and commandeering motorcycle pursuits in Tomorrow Never Dies, another (tapioca pearl-spitting) star was born.

Stephanie Hsu remembers the precise moment that she knew she wanted to act. It was in grade school, during an assembly to present a fake advertisement for lemonade. "I held an empty lemonade carton. A kid in the class held a cardboard piece of paper that said, 'Buy lemonade. 50 cents. Only here now.' I had to stand up in front of the class and read it off the board," she recalls. "I remember thinking to myself, 'Wow, that was really fun and I think I'm kind of good at this, but I should also think of something more practical to do with my life.'" Such practical thinking for a pint-sized Hsu! That could be attributed to coming of age under what she describes as a "very immigrant household."

Hsu was born November 1990 to a single mother in Torrance, Calif., a coastal community in the South Bay region of LA. Most weekends were spent in Monterey Park, a dense Asian immigrant enclave about 30 miles northbound. The Hsu matriarch would frequent the city's 99 Ranch, a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian imports otherwise not found in the wasteland of ethnic aisles in American grocers. In the parking lot, mischief: "I was the first girl and only girl for a really long time in my extended family, so I grew up with a bunch of boys," Hsu says. "We would go into the parking lot, we would get boba, and we would spit and shoot boba at cars." She laughs at the admission. "That was my favorite thing to do."

Allyson Riggs/A24 Stephanie Hsu in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'

Her mother had reservations about a career in the arts. But don't expect Hsu to spew cliché rhetoric about "tiger parenting" here. "People give such a bad rap to immigrant parents. Like, 'They're so strict, blah, blah, blah.' And I'm like, no, they're just afraid," she offers, her tone soft. "They want their kids to be safe. And our country, America, has not always been the safest place for people who are different. I've been thinking about that lately: Instead of always telling us the ways in which we are different, why don't we look at you and say, 'Maybe you haven't provided a really healthy environment for people who are different to really thrive.'"

Hsu's love for the arts never faltered, though she may have briefly considered a career as a lawyer. (Blame a certain 1997 legal drama starring Dylan McDermott for that. "When I was a kid I really loved the show The Practice.") But in lieu of taking the bar, Hsu packed her belongings and headed across the country to New York City, where she pursued theater at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. "Everything I've always wanted to do has been about some form of expression or communication, even law," she says. "I feel like when I even pulled the thread or imagined myself as a lawyer, it's because I wanted to stand up for what was right, which I do feel like art does that as well."

Her career began in experimental theater and comedy. Hsu made regular appearances on MTV's Girl Code and a handful of shorts before originating the roles of Karen the computer in Kyle Jarrow's The SpongeBob Musical and Christine Canigula in Joe Tracz's Be More Chill, later reprising them during their respective Broadway runs in 2017 and 2019. Following several cameo appearances on varying sitcoms (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Nightcap), she landed her first recurring TV role on 2016's The Path, the Hulu drama centered on a cult-ish spiritual movement starring Aaron Paul, Michelle Monaghan, and Hugh Dancy.

Coincidentally, Hsu played a character named Joy, a member of the community that finds a defector in Paul's character, Eddie. "What is all this Joy stuff? Maybe my lot in this life is to bring joy," Hsu muses, looking back at the experience with fondness. "I had a small role but I got to show up to work every day to learn. I would be in scenes where I don't say anything, but I got to just sit there and watch everybody else work. It was an amazing place for me to really understand what it was like to be on set."

Everett Collection Michael Zegen and Stephanie Hsu on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

More TV appearances and shorts followed, and in 2019, a particularly delicious role: Mei Lin on Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A wry, fast-talking medical student and Chinatown resident, Mei becomes a love interest for Joel (Michael Zegen) in the period dramedy centered on Rachel Brosnahan's 1950s housewife and her unconventional pursuit of a stand-up comic career. Casting director Cindy Tolan, who had cast Hsu on Kimmy Schmidt, implored her to come in for the role, but the hesitant Hsu was fully immersed in leading Broadway's Be More Chill. 

"I'm doing eight shows a week. We were about to enter previews. I was like, 'I can't miss a show,'" she recalls of that frenetic period. Of course, she met with Sherman-Palladino and her collaborator husband Dan. "There was no guarantee that Mei would be there throughout the season. They just said it was gonna be in one episode and maybe there might be a romantic arc, but they wanted to see how I worked with Michael," Hsu says. "They didn't wanna promise anything because it's such a specific show and it's a hard genre and era to capture, so they wanted to see how it worked."

Suffice to say, it worked. Mei Lin became a recurring fan-favorite and is set to return in the upcoming fifth and final season, continuing her surprise pregnancy storyline. It was while filming Maisel's third season that Hsu "finally admitted to myself that I was actually an actor," she says. "I had been working for 10 years in New York in downtown spaces, but there was something about doing eight shows a week on Broadway while shooting the TV show. I know it is such an Asian excellence thing, where until you have As across the report card, you're like, 'I guess I'm doing okay.'"

Her mother had a similar moment of resonation. "After season 3 came out, my mom was on a tour bus, and apparently in front of her there was a mother and daughter. They were talking about Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," Hsu recounts. "One of them goes, 'Oh, and there's this new character, she's this Chinese woman, she's so funny.' And my mom goes, 'I think that's my daughter.' She told me that story because she was like, 'I thought your role was kind of small.' It was the first time that my mom really realized that what we do has an impact beyond just the people in your family."

Then came Awkwafina is Nora From Queens. When her run on Broadway wrapped, Hsu was cast in a standout season 1 episode that took cues from traditional Korean romance dramas. She played the memorable Shu Shu, young grandma's Chairman Mao-loving bestie, in an episode that also featured guest stars Jamie Chung, Simu Liu, and Harry Shum Jr. It was directed by none other than the Daniels, and, in the words of Humphrey Bogart's expatriate Rick Blaine, marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Allyson Riggs/A24 Tallie Medel and Stephanie Hsu in 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'

"Before I even read the script, before the Daniels told me Michelle Yeoh would play my mom, before they told me A24 was attached, I was like, 'Whatever you guys are doing, I'm gonna do it,'" Hsu says of Everything Everywhere. "The Daniels are amazing. I honestly think we are cut from the same artistic cloth. We're very much best friends and soulmates in so many ways. Working with them on that one [Nora] episode, I was like, 'I'm yours for life. Whatever you want me to do, I'm yours.' But then of course when I read the script, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it was a story about a mother and a daughter, an immigrant family. I had never seen anything like that before."

The film follows Evelyn, the disillusioned owner of a failing laundromat being audited by the IRS. On top of tax troubles, husband Waymond (Quan) is trying to figure out the best way to serve her divorce papers, and her relationship with her queer daughter, Joy, is deteriorating. While at a local IRS branch, an auditor, played by an unassuming Curtis, presents the dire situation at hand, but the meeting is interrupted when Waymond — except, it's not really her husband, but a Waymond from another universe — alerts her to the existence of multiple universes occupied with disparate versions of themselves, each differentiated by the divergent paths their lives could have taken.

Also, an interdimensional rupture has unraveled reality. And it's sort of up to her to save the universe.

Hsu plays not only Joy but antagonist Jobu, a nihilistic version of the latter connected to the rupture and bent on destruction after she's pushed to her breaking point. For Hsu, the role(s) is one she's long dreamt of. "I came from experimental theater. I have a passion for the craft and what we do and storytelling and breaking that open. And I had never seen a character that would allow me to do all that I feel I'm capable of: to be funny, to be wild, to be really small, to be broken," she says. " I wanted Joy to be so almost forgettable that Jobu is like the wildest surprise ever."

Jobu is indeed a wild surprise. When she first makes herself known to our multiverse-hopping heroine, Miss Tupaki strolls in clad in a bedazzled Elvis Presley costume, leashed pig by her side, and proceeds to blow up a police officer's head, turning it into confetti. A cigarette sits squarely at the center of her mouth. That was by Hsu's design, by the way.

"Best entrance in the whole wide world. The thing I'm most proud of specifically with that entrance is, Jobu's not a typical villain," Hsu says. "She's funny; she's so cool; she doesn't care what you think about her. Typically the trope about a cooler villain is they're smoking a cigarette from the side of their mouth, and I was like, 'I want her to be so stupid. I want her to smoke the cigarette from the center of her mouth.' And for Halloween, so many people noticed it. They took pictures as Jobu with a cigarette at the center of their mouth. I felt really seen."

Allyson Riggs/A24 Stephanie Hsu in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'

Cigarettes and surrealism aside, the film is, at its core, a story about family, and the divide between Evelyn and her father (Hong) lends to its searing portrait of a mother and daughter. "It's a chemistry thing," Hsu says of creating that dynamic with Yeoh. "It's also a Michelle Yeoh thing. She makes everybody feel like family when you work with her. Her love is so big. My love is so big. When we were talking about the script, we didn't have a roundtable discussion about intergenerational trauma. Everybody just knew it. We just slipped into it in a way that I think is because it's from our body of experience.

"I'll never forget filming the parking lot scene with Michelle," Hsu continues. "That was a really special day because it was toward the end of the film. We really had built this family in the process of making this. I feel like I looked into the depths of her soul and she looked into mine." There were some anxieties, Hsu recalls, over whether the scene would work, "but it really surpassed their wildest dreams. Everybody was at the monitors. Everybody was a mess."

Hsu's mother was not exempt. "She came to the LA premiere and after the movie, she was crying, and she pointed to the screen and she said, 'That's me,'" Hsu recalls. "And it was surprising because I thought she was gonna say, 'Oh, that's you.' Like, 'Ha ha ha, you're that  grumpy daughter.' But she was crying and she said, 'That's me.' And I realized that that was the first time my mom had ever seen herself on the screen. And that to me is so powerful. I've been on my high horse about intergenerational healing; and that to me felt like a moment where she was also seeing her represented. A little bit of healing happened to her as well."

It was while filming Everything Everywhere that Hsu got the call to appear in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Marvel's first Asian superhero film headlined by her former Nora costar Liu and also starring Yeoh. She played Soo, a friend of Liu's titular hero and his sidekick Katy (Nora star Awkwafina) who just wants the best for her slacker pals, in a minor role that almost didn't happen. "It was a small role, but I just wanted to be a part of celebrating what that movie meant," Hsu says. "When they wanted to film that scene, it was our last week filming Everything Everywhere, so I couldn't leave to go to Australia. I had to pass. I was so bummed because I knew Michelle was going to be part of it. I met Simu in that episode of Nora From Queens. I was so proud of him."

Marvel Studios Stephanie Hsu in 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. A year after she passed on it, Hsu received yet another call from production. They were doing reshoots in LA. Did she still want to partake? "That role ended up coming back to me, and what's so wild is the place that we filmed that scene for Shang-Chi was the same exact place where we wrapped Everything Everywhere," Hsu says. "I was like, I cannot believe that the last thing I filmed and the first thing I filmed since this all happened is exactly at the same place. I feel really at peace with the universe. Obviously, every day is different, but I really believe what is not for me is not for me, and what is meant for me is for me."

She's grateful for the meaningful connections she's been able to forge with collaborators, and most of whom serve as the connecting thread in many of her projects, past and present. "What I'm learning about myself and maybe what brings me a lot of ease in this industry is I really only work with my friends or people that I really love," Hsu says. One upcoming project in particular involves a family reunion with Yeoh, Quan, and Hong, much to the delight of fans: Disney+'s upcoming action comedy American Born Chinese. Hsu will guest-star as Shiji Niangniang, the Goddess of Stones, on the series based on Gene Luen Yang's mythological graphic novel of the same name, which also marks a reunion between Hsu and Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton, who serves as executive producer. Hsu revels in the opportunity to amplify a topic she admittedly once found very "booooring!" during her Chinese school days.

"American Born Chinese really does remind me of Chinese school, in like, reclaiming and re-celebrating all the stories that have been passed down for generations," she says. "This is not just about visibility, it's about people being able to amplify their stories and share their stories so that the next generation doesn't feel so alone, or doesn't feel like their history gets lost. I just want the next generation to be able to embrace that sooner because I know it took me a long time to actually get to celebrate that part of my lineage. "

Hsu is currently in the midst of filming David Leitch's star-studded The Fall Guy, a take on the 1980s adventure series starring Lee Majors. Other upcoming credits include Adele Lim's Joy Ride and Randall Park's Shortcomings. "The thing that always matters to me is the why," she says of future projects. "I really care about passionate filmmakers who have a vision. Since the nomination has come out, I feel an extra gust of wind in my sails because the fact is, for our industry and the people who make the decisions, these types of recognition make someone more valuable in their eyes. I don't believe that's true. No one needs an Oscar to feel important, but I know that in our industry, that helps things get made. So I feel really excited right now to get things made that I really have believed in for the last year, but maybe didn't have as much energy to my name to be able to bring something to life."

Ed Araquel/Lionsgate Sabrina Wu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, and Stephanie Hsu in 'Joy Ride'

As the acoustics in the cafe rise from the chatter of the brunch crowd, Hsu's voice lowers. She lets it be known that she is fully cognizant of the magnitude of this moment.

"So many people have been asking me about the responsibility of having this nomination and what that means for so many Asian women, what that means for the Asian community, people of color in general," Hsu says. "I've said I have only felt that every opportunity is a new responsibility or an opportunity to bring 10 other people along with me. I think when you are marginalized in any way, you recognize the importance every single time, and I want to continue to carry that weight, but I've also been trying to practice letting myself just enjoy it. Because that emotional societal labor cannot be on and should not be on every person who's ever broken down a barrier. We also need a moment to like, breathe, have a snack, enjoy, celebrate the goodness. I wanna just tell stories."

She also knows that there is still so much more work to be done. Hsu is up to the task, though, expressing bewilderment at a striking statistic: Yeoh is the first Asian nominee in the Oscars' Best Actress category in the award show's 95-year history. (A technicality: Merle Oberon was the first in 1936, but she hid her ancestry and passed for white.)

"I remember having this feeling when I was giving a speech for Michelle at Palm Springs [International Film Festival]: What makes anyone think that all the cards that have been stacked against Michelle are not also still stacked against me? What makes you think that if goodness happens there, then it'll just pass along? It hasn't felt like that for me in this last year of releasing our movie," she says. "I have felt all sorts of walls go up, and that has given me more fire in my belly to really feel like there's so much work to be done. I'm not gonna sit back silent. I'm not gonna let you push me aside. I am going to bring this flood of other people who are waiting behind the gates through."

She reaches for her coffee, the mug nearly running on empty. "That's why the nomination feels so beautiful," Hsu offers. "I know that it represents the younger generation, the people who are waiting in the wings, the people who see themselves in Joy or Jobu or both, the queer community. I feel really grateful to be able to be the person who's ushering in that wave of people alongside me."

Related content:

• Stephanie Hsu says this year's record Oscar nominations for Asian actors represent 'intergenerational healing'

• The cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once pulls no punches in EW's Around the Table chat

• The Fabelmans' Michelle Williams, our latest Oscars predictions, and more in EW's The Awardist