Stephanie Hsu on “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is in a genre all its own—you could call it sci-fi-martial-arts-family-drama. Stephanie Hsu plays both Joy, an angsty teen-ager struggling with her immigrant mother, and Jobu, an omnipotent, interdimensional supervillain. “The relationship between Evelyn and Joy in its simplest terms is very fraught,” Hsu tells Jia Tolentino. “It’s the story of a relationship of a daughter who’s a lesbian who is deeply longing for her mother’s acceptance … but they keep chasing each other around in the universe and they can just never find one another. Until of course they launch into the multiverse and become nemeses.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.9	The new film, Everything, Everywhere, all at once, a great title, is one of the first real surprise hits since we've started going back to the theaters.
0:19.6	The film is fun, it's
0:21.4	heartfelt, and complicated. And it's in a genre all its own. You could call it a sci-fi martial
0:28.2	arts family drama. It's about a Chinese American woman named Evelyn, and she might be the only
0:33.8	person who can save the universe from an omnipotent, interdimensional supervillain.
0:41.2	I'm here because we need you help.
0:44.6	Very busy today.
0:46.0	A whole time to help you.
0:48.4	There's a great evil that has taken root in my world.
0:51.4	I cannot talk now.
0:53.7	Unless you can help you with my taxes.
0:56.0	What is growth necklaces?
0:58.0	I know you have a lot of things on your mind, but nothing could possibly matter more than this
1:02.0	conversation we're having right now concerning the fate of every single world of our infinite multiverse.
1:07.0	My dear Evelyn, I know you.
1:13.6	With every passing moment you fear you might have missed your chance to make something of your life.
1:20.6	I'm here to tell you, every rejection, every disappointment has led you here to this moment.
1:31.0	Don't have anything distract you from it.
1:34.0	It turns out that the supervillain threatening everything is in an alternate universe,
1:39.5	Evelyn's teenage daughter, Joy, and Joy's concerns are not exactly science fiction.
1:45.8	The relationship between Evelyn and Joy, in its simplest terms, is very fraught.
	...

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