Why Everything Everywhere All At Once Actor Stephanie Hsu Was Nervous In Front Of Michelle Yeoh
Meeting people you admire can be extremely rewarding. Depending on the circumstances, they could give you invaluable advice, inspire your next steps, and encourage you to take them. But in the moments leading up to your big interaction, no matter how prepared you are, nerves can get the better of anyone.
If you've ever attended a convention, you could see the gamut of emotions associated with coming face to face with someone that you look up to. Some fans might be tongue-tied while others unleash rambling word vomit a million miles a minute. There might even be some tears involved. Although, if you haven't exhausted your time in front of your favorite creator or celebrity, you may see that they're regular people too. And they're still capable of having similar feelings when they meet their idols as well.
For example, when it hit her that she would actually be working with the legendary Michelle Yeoh, "Everything Everywhere All At Once" star Stephanie Hsu had a bit of a "Wait, what?" moment.
'Every discovery is just a reminder we're all small and stupid'
In a recent interview with Deadline, Hsu talked about the preparation she went through with filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as Daniels, to create Jobu Tupaki, the omnipotent supervillain that intends to end the multiverse. Because she's such a self-proclaimed "nerd about craft," she found great satisfaction in finding ways to incorporate other multiversal variants of her character into the big bad, particularly Joy, the daughter of Yeoh's Evelyn. But as she and Daniels threw things at the wall to see what stuck, the actor was ready to bring it all in front of the camera ... Until she remembered who her scene partner was while shooting in a hallway during the first week of production. Tsu recounted:
"All of a sudden it dawned on me: 'I'm about to swing these nunchaku at Michelle Yeoh.' I was so nervous, because I was about to be a freak. But the thing about Michelle is that she's actually really silly as well. And while the Daniels can feel like silly guys who give everyone the rope to create, they're also extraordinary craftsmen. I want the world for them, because I want more people in the industry to know that it's possible to value the people you're working with and give them that room, and that great art can come from trust and love, and from not taking ourselves too seriously, but always holding the craft with responsibility."
As Joy and Evelyn learn in the movie, part of life is about finding balance, both in your own life and in the multiverse. By the sounds of things, this incredible film works so well because everyone involved embraced that controlled chaos both onscreen and behind the scenes, so nervousness clearly didn't last long.