Everything Everywhere All at Once, the little multiverse film that could, has received 11 Academy Award nominations. The Daniels’ transcendent film from A24 nabbed recognition in the most coveted category—Best Picture—along with acting nods for stars Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis. We’re rooting for our genre underdog family.
Before the nominations were announced, Hsu, who plays Yeoh’s daughter and multiversal threat, was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where she talked about the film’s triumphant journey from a small release to major awards contender, heaping well-deserved praise on her on-screen mom, Yeoh. “She really is incredible. I mean, she’s not only a total badass and completely so dedicated to the craft, but she really makes everyone feel like family,” she gushed. “I strongly believe that the movie was able to work because she was our matriarch and, you know, as regal and poised and beautiful as she is. She’s also so silly. She’s really weird. So I’m really happy that she got this opportunity to kind of let her freak flag fly also.”
Colbert brought out an image of the cast and crew on the first day of shooting, showing them surrounded by celebratory festive colors, which was done to imbue the set with luck. That came in handy as they wrapped production on the day the world shut down for the pandemic: March 16, 2020. It’s a Chinese tradition, Hsu explained. “I always say that our movie has been protected by some woo woo magical spiritual thing. And, you know, because of the success of it and all the all the good things that have come from it,” she said. “But that photo is a cast and crew photo. On the first day we did a tradition that they do on Hong Kong sets, where you cover the cameras ... in red, [and] you lay out a [roasted] suckling pig.” she said of the feast in the center of the photo. “And everybody in the crew and the cast, they all have incense sticks. Basically you bless the set for smooth sailing, and the directors and the lead actors—we take a big knife and we hold onto the knife at the same time, and you cut the pig from head to tail to bless an easeful shoot. And so we did that on the first day. I think back to that all the time, because so much magic has been happening for us and we never should have been as successful as we are. No one believed in us. And for it to now be a movie that has shifted the world of cinema and also is in, you know, [the] Oscar conversation is pretty wild.”
Check out the rest of the interview below!
Everything Everywhere All at Once is now available on digital, streaming, and home video release.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.