“Lucky and grateful” are two words that came to Stephanie Hsu’s mind when she was nominated for an Oscar alongside legendary actor Michelle Yeoh.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 32-year-old actor shared her thoughts on her Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (“EEAAO”) and how it felt to receive the recognition alongside Yeoh, who is nominated for Best Actress.
When I think about Michelle, I just feel so lucky and grateful that I get to be alongside her in this record-breaking, history-making moment. I know that has not been an easy road for me, and she’s had to go through that times 10. So it’s pretty wild that we’re having this moment together. Our movie is a lot about intergenerational trauma, but I feel like today we get to have a public-facing moment of intergenerational healing.
Hsu explained that the recent Oscar nomination is just as big for her as it is for Yeoh and their co-star Ke Huy Quan, 51, who has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the first time.
I really wanted to do it as a blessing, as a ritual of recognition not only for myself but for the whole family that came together to make this movie, our crew and everyone. I am just really proud and really happy that not only our principal cast, but so much of our creative team was celebrated as well. It’s 11 nominations, and every single one is everyone’s first time.
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as “the Daniels,” the film received 11 nominations at the 95th Academy Awards, which will air on March 12.
Among those nominated is Jamie Lee Curtis, who, after over four decades of acting credits under her belt, received her first Academy Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Curtis, 64, went viral for her ecstatic reaction to Yeoh’s recent Golden Globe win, which was later turned into a meme T-shirt.
Speaking about her performance, where she essentially played two different characters, Hsu said her role in “EEAAO” helped encapsulate much of her training and what she wished for as an actor.
I feel really passionate about dramaturgy and story. I had a traditional acting experience when I was at NYU, but then my mentor Liz Swados was an experimental theater queen who taught me that every artist has a huge responsibility to be in communication with the world and to make art that hopefully moves us into a better place. It should be subversive and wild and scare us, but it should also shake us out of our seats.
With all the recognition Asian American actors have been receiving for their art, Hsu believes that this wave of cultural representation will continue.
I mean, again, you really think about it and you’re like, ’95 years is a really long time for there to hardly be any Asian actresses nominated for Best Actress.’ That is our collective history, but that history is also being broken.
Hsu will rejoin her co-stars Yeoh and Quan in the upcoming Disney Plus series “American Born Chinese,” an adaptation of cartoonist Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning graphic novel. They will be joined by “Into the Badlands” star Daniel Wu, who will play Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.
