EXCLUSIVE: Stephanie Hsu Opens Up About her First Feature Film, Everything Everywhere All At Once

Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert aka “The Daniels” just released their brand new film, Everything Everywhere All At Once. Starring Michelle Yeoh, the movie follows an exhausted woman who has just been asked save the world.

We got the chance to speak with one of the stars of the film, Stephanie Hsu, about the film, working with The Daniels, balancing her two characters, and so much more.

Check out what she had to say below. The interview does feature spoilers, so read at your own risk.

Besides wanting to work again with “The Daniels”, what drew you to wanting to play Joy and Jobu?

“Well, I feel like it’s so rare that you get to see characters who get to be both crazy and weird and chaotic, and completely unexpected while also playing the same character that is very broken and intimate and vulnerable.”

Which character did you enjoy playing more, Joy or Jobu?

“I came from a theater background. I did experimental theater, was on Broadway for a while, did The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, what I’ve been doing up until this point has been actually very high energy and very forward. So, I was actually more excited even to play Joy because I wanted to play a character that was quite simple in some ways, very complicated emotionally. But totally is a character that, lends itself so perfectly to film, because you can really get so close to the inner experience. And also I’ve never played a villain before. I’ve never played a nihilist villain. Working with the Daniels, we improvised a lot for the role of Jobu. And so getting to play a role that, we would all be surprised and had no idea what was going to happen next. That was really awesome”.

How do you balance that though, playing Joy and then playing Jobu? On the surface, they’re both experiencing a lot of emotion, but one is over the top dramatic and the other one is more of an introvert.

“Totally. I mean that was the task at hand, right? Was to create a nihilistic villain that wasn’t cliché, not just a big bad guy who does scary things. But that the root of the villain was still also the same root of Joy, and holding onto that thread of the kind of craziness comes from a place also of sadness, and despair and being at a loss. I think that’s why Joy and Jobu are so interesting because you always feel Jobu’s presence, even when she’s not on screen.”

There’s definitely a presence there, you can see it following Evelyn, but you don’t realize it until the movie is over. Joy’s presence, even her husband’s Waymond’s presence. Instead of the devil and the angel sitting on Evelyn’s shoulders, it was her husband and her daughter.

“And that’s why I think people love watching this movie a second time and a third time. The way I describe it is, if you’re going in knowing nothing about the movie, there’s a part of you that’s always going to be wondering if you should trust the filmmakers or if you should trust the story. And it’s so funny, we’ve all become such jaded audience members in some ways too, because there’s so much content out there. So you can feel that push and pull of fighting the movie until I think the fanny pack scene happens or maybe another scene happens and you decide to surrender. Then if enjoy the ride that you go on, it’s so fun to go in a second time because now you know, and now you trust it. And you can just relax into the film. It’s fun.”

But nothing felt forced.

“No. Not at all.”

With a lot of these movies, when you see things like the sex toys as num-chuks or Jenny Slate with the Pomeranian, you would watch it and say you’ve got to be kidding me. But that’s not the case with this movie. The weirdness made sense. Like your array of costumes, which one was the hardest one for you to act in?

“I would say that the hardest one for me to act in was probably the goddess Jobu costume. It was hard to get into that costume. It’s like a pleather body suit with leggings and then a skirt. Then these huge gloves with plastic, cuffs on them and a beaded necklace. And I have a bagel braid on the head.”

That was a great costume!

“Jobu only stays Joy and Jobu, even going through all these multiverses, she’s still this version of a villain. And so kind of holding onto the thread of the complexity of the family relationship and the fearlessness while being dressed in this beautiful out fit, that was a hard push and pull. Yeah. I mean, it was very fun.”

Did you have a least favorite costume?

“I don’t think I have a least favorite costume, which is a boring answer. But I think we didn’t realize that we were going to be in the golf girl costume as long as we were going to be in. I would say the costume designer and the makeup artist, they would probably say that golf girl, wasn’t their least favorite, but we had so many cool costumes and we just didn’t realize that we would be in that one for so long. Maybe we would’ve chosen something else”.

Speaking of that costume, what I really enjoyed about the scene where you’re wearing the costume is the power Jobu had. What was it like to film that scene? Were you really controlling the effects that took place or were those added during post production? 

“Oh yeah, that’s all happening. So those are called practicals. There’s one moment where I lift my glove and the lights kind of chase down the hallway. That is someone turning on the lights or rigging the lights so that they do that.”

How empowering was that moment? 

“It was so cool. That’s the thing about practical, right? as opposed to doing special effects later, is there’s something about it that really creates the environment. As a performer, you can start to feel different texture. I’m not a very good pretend actor, quote unquote pretend actor in the sense of, if there’s like a loud bang, some directors will say bang, and then you respond to it. But some directors don’t and it’s hard for me to just make this up in my brain, because that’s very false.

But yeah, I love that hallway scene so much, and at the very end when Jobu is describing to Evelyn, basically what nihilism is and the truth is that nothing matters. It’s just so bizarre and intimate and scary. But also like a beautiful scene, and it’s so close to our faces. I love that scene so much.”

It’s so honest

“It is.”

I felt like this scene was one of the first honest conversations the two characters that had together. I go back to what I said before this movie was so weird, but it never lost the plot. And for you, when you were reading the script, was there something in there, a particular scene or moment where you were just like, I’m not sure how we’re going to pull this scene off and then when you saw it on screen, it turned out much better than you anticipated?

“I would say probably all the fight scenes. I couldn’t possibly have imagined that they would be as epic and beautiful as they are. And I would say that even when we did the fight scene, I watched the fanny pack scene in person and watched Michelle in the office, the sign spinner scene, I watched them film that and even seeing it in person was incredible. And what the Ley brothers did was incredible. But then seeing it in the edit with music was epic. There’s this one shot that I just found out recently, I was with Paul Rogers, our editor. And I was just telling him how much I love him, and then we were talking about our favorite scenes now that we’ve seen it so many times. I told him one of my favorite scenes is there’s this moment where Evelyn [Yeouh] is starting to understand what verse jumping is.

It’s her first verse jump, where she decides to go the other way. She decides to not leave with Waymond. She runs in the hallway, she lands on sticks and she becomes this blind opera performer. And that’s when she does the eyes closed beginning of the fight sequence. And there’s this moment where it goes into slowmo and the score is the opera. She closes her eyes and she leans back in slow motion, and this sword just grazes her head. I love that moment so much, and I just found out that was a green screen. That was an insert shot that they did during reshoots. Isn’t that crazy?”

You would’ve never known that.

“You would’ve never known, and honestly that moment, I feel like ties in the poeticism of the fight scenes in a way I love so much. The fight scenes are so beautiful, they’re balletic.”

Well, the other thing you mentioned is obviously the music, that played such an important part throughout the entire movie. You sing in the movie and are featured on the soundtrack. Is it just for the portions that you got to sing in the movie or are we going to actually hear you sing a full song?

“It’s only going to be a little portion of what I sang in the movie redone up by Son Lux. I get to be on a vinyl with David Byrne and Andre 3000 and Mitski and Moses Sumney, it’s pretty cool. The soundtrack itself is going to be boosted and have other kinds of music on it, but the score is so beautiful.”

How did they convince you to sing in the movie?

“Well, the part where I go, ‘Sucked into a bagel.’ and then I get thrown own by James Hong, I get crushed into a wall by James Hong, that is something actually that came out of my callback. We were working on that scene in the callback and we really started to just explode it into different versions and they would say, try anything, blow it up. Okay, now make fun of the movie or make fun of yourself. And so it was really just chaotic. That came from the callback, and so when we were filming it on the day, they were like, can you do that thing when you sang sucked into a bagel?

But yeah, it’s funny. I think that there was a lot of inspiration from Jim Carrey and just being able to switch on a dime. And it’s fun because we all talk about the movie like, ‘Oh, it’s so weird, it’s so silly.’ But we also very much understood what we were making. We were very collaborative and in communication about what our parameters were. Then there’s another portion that I sing where it was an ADR moment and then Daniels had already edited it and they were like, can you sing this part? It’s funny, I have done a lot of stuff before where singing is not in the script, and then they ask me to sing and I’m usually very like, I’m not a monkey. But obviously for Jobu, who can do anything, it totally makes sense for her.”

For my last question for you, this is your first feature film, how is your next film’s going to top this?

“Well, luckily, our movie is big and it is lengthy. And so a lot of even crazier Jobu stuff, we did, didn’t end up making the film. It’ll be in the director’s cut or just in our memories forever.”

I really hope it’s in the director’s cut.

“And so I feel really lucky because I was worried that I would see the movie and I’d be like, oh no, I did everything for this movie, I’m never going to get to do anything again because I already did everything. But luckily having seen it, I know I have so much more to offer. I shot a movie last year in Vancouver, that’s hopefully coming out this year or next. It was my feature first feature after this feature, and it was so fun. But you only get your first once and I feel like this in so many ways is such a representation of what I value personally artistically. I know I’m never going to necessarily get to feel this special moment this way again, but I’m just open to stories that are never before seen, that have a lot of heart to them, and that I know why they exist.

There’s so much stuff going on in the world, there’s so much stuff on our phones, on our screens, on our streaming services. And I really want to make things that I know are doing good in some way out in the world and cut through the noise. But I think, I’m excited to do something a little bit more intimate next. My other movie’s really crazy as well, so I think it would be nice to do a little 180. But I have no idea what spaces this movie will open up for me. And so I’m also just trying to stay centered and being honest about what kind of work I’m drawn to, while being open, because I didn’t know what this movie was when I signed on for it. I just knew that I loved the Daniels. So, I just want to keep working with people that I love, who surprised me and challenged me. And I feel lucky because I think those relationships are pretty rare actually, and I’m not the type of actor that wants to do everything. I don’t want to just act to act. I’m bad at that in fact.

So I have this sense that the right collaborators will find each other. But I love film. I love TV too, but I think making films is my favorite thing. It just makes sense to me, there’s a beginning, middle, end. There’s no, is there going to be next season? It’s just this moment, this story you’re making, so you really sculpt it together. And in some ways it’s almost like doing a play or something where you’re just in it, and you’re really carving it out and building something. And certainly getting to share it in theaters with people, is amazing.”