Stephanie Hsu on “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.4	The new film, Everything Everywhere, All It Once, a great title, is one of the first real
0:17.1	surprise hits since we started going back to the theaters.
0:19.7	The film is fun, it's heartfelt, and complicated, and it's in general all its own.
0:26.1	You could call it a sci-fi martial arts family drama.
0:29.9	It's about a Chinese-American woman named Evelyn, and she might be the only person who can
0:35.0	save the universe from an omnipotent, interdimensional, supervillain.
0:39.5	I'm here because we need your help.
0:45.0	Very busy today, all time to help you.
0:47.8	There's a great evil that has taken over in my world.
0:51.3	I cannot talk with that.
0:53.3	Unless you can help me with my taxes.
0:55.7	What is cruel snicklaces?
0:57.7	I know you have a lot of things on your mind, but nothing could possibly matter more than
1:01.8	this conversation we haven't played out concerning the fate of every single well about
1:05.9	infinite and multiverse.
1:07.4	Respect for all the disease.
1:12.2	My dear Evelyn, I know you, with every passing moment you feel you might have missed
1:18.7	your chance to make something of your life.
1:20.7	I'm here to tell you, every rejection, every disappointment has led you here.
1:27.7	To this moment, don't let anything distract you from it.
1:34.7	It turns out that the supervillain threatening everything is in an alternate universe Evelyn's
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.