The stars of A24’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” including Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Andy Le, Brian Le, and Daniel Mah, join the directing duo The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) in this interview with CinemaBlend's Law Sharma. They discuss the chaos of filming, keeping track of continuity within the multiverse, Asian representation, dealing with generational trauma and more.
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00:00You guys are so cool.
00:01This might be one of my favorite films of all time.
00:04No.
00:06Yeah, no, it's up there.
00:17Evelyn feels so much like my own mother in a lot of ways.
00:21Michelle, my first question is for you.
00:23I wonder what does this role mean to you
00:25in getting to work with geniuses like the Daniels?
00:28I think I'm still coming to terms with it.
00:30I think the first day when I received the script,
00:33it was, you know, it's a little unbelievable.
00:36It's like I've been waiting so long, my God, so long
00:40to actually have an aging Asian immigrant,
00:44ordinary woman turned into a superhero
00:47and a story all about her.
00:50But the Daniels, like you say, are evil geniuses
00:53because they put it in a sci-fi world
00:56where all this craziness, this ordinary craziness can happen.
01:01And I'm very proud, I must say.
01:05I am very, very proud of not just myself,
01:09but every, all my co-stars like Jamie, my God, all right.
01:13I don't have to tell you what, how brilliant she is.
01:17But Kee Kwan, Stephanie Hsu,
01:20it's like every single performance was crucial
01:23and tied up to this bagel.
01:25Honestly, I just showed up and they would say,
01:27okay, now we're doing this.
01:28And I'd be like, okay.
01:31Because the truth of the matter is,
01:33as Michelle just beautifully said,
01:36this is a movie about real people.
01:38Like the performances have to be real.
01:41And I know Deirdre's.
01:44I just know them.
01:46You know, the world exists partially because of Deirdre's.
01:51If there were no Deirdre's, it would be anarchy.
01:54So, you know, she's a bit of a police officer in a way.
01:57And she takes her job very seriously.
02:00And I just knew women like her.
02:02And so for me, it was just making sure
02:04that I was being true to her.
02:06I can see where this story is going.
02:12It does not look good.
02:22I was the daughter of an immigrant.
02:23I am the daughter of an immigrant.
02:25I never thought that I could even be in this industry.
02:30I never saw myself on the screen,
02:32maybe a little in the goonies, you know.
02:35And I just think this, so many people in our community
02:43really relate to this story.
02:44And it is something that they've never seen before, right?
02:47And especially with everything that's going on
02:50in the world right now,
02:51and specifically in our country, in America,
02:55with the violence against Asians,
02:58like people just need to know that we are
03:01so full of history and messy and love.
03:08And it's not a stereotype.
03:10It's just life.
03:12It's, you know, Michelle Yeoh as the owner of a laundromat,
03:15you know, and we never get to hear that
03:18in a way that is just honest.
03:20I think this is maybe one of the most honest portrayals
03:23of an Asian family that I've ever seen.
03:25And I'm just excited and honored to be a part of it.
03:29Who was in charge of continuity on this film
03:32and keeping track of the narrative behind the scenes?
03:34Because it had to be a logistical nightmare.
03:39Yeah, logistical nightmare is the right word.
03:41So our wonderful script supervisor, Julia Sector,
03:44she was sort of the one who had to protect the continuity
03:48as much as possible.
03:49But then, you know, with this movie,
03:52after a certain point, the continuity doesn't matter.
03:54You know, it's like there are certain scenes
03:56where yes, we have to be really careful.
03:57And then there's other scenes
03:58where we knew how it was going to edit.
04:01And as long as everyone trusted us,
04:03we could kind of say that matters, that doesn't matter.
04:06Let's keep shooting.
04:09And so Julia Sector kind of protected it all.
04:12We threw away a lot of rules.
04:15And then the rest of our key crew
04:17kind of had to also hold on to just their own departments
04:21because each department had a nightmare scenario
04:24when it comes to keeping track of it all.
04:26The thing that mattered most to us was,
04:29you know, the emotional continuity
04:31and working with the actors to make sure they knew
04:33where they were and why and how they felt.
04:36And kind of like, as long as you have that,
04:38you're 90% there, you know?
04:40We go onto the set every day, Michelle.
04:43Michelle would be like,
04:44you know, I don't know what's going on.
04:45And we're the same.
04:47We're like, okay, like, how are we supposed to,
04:50you know, how are we supposed to choreograph the action
04:51when we don't even know exactly what's going on?
04:56And they're like, it's okay, just run wild.
04:57And then we'll, you know, we'll-
04:59They will, we'll put it together for you.
05:01This is the first movie
05:02where I've cried back and forth five times.
05:05I cried, I dried up and laughed my ass off.
05:08Then I cried.
05:08Then I laughed so I had a cramp on my cheek.
05:11And I cried again.
05:12And I'm like, God damn!
05:13And then we still don't know what the hell's going on.
05:16Growing up, Hong Kong action movies were all I watched.
05:19And that's because my father comes from Hong Kong.
05:22And so he showed me all of his favorite movies growing up.
05:24And to us, if we were going to do an action movie,
05:28that was the only way we could imagine doing it.
05:31And so even though a lot of Hollywood
05:33isn't doing that these days,
05:34we searched high and low for the right partners
05:37and collaborators and the Marshall Club,
05:39who we found from YouTube, were perfect.
05:42They blew us away.
05:43And we were like, these people can do the fight choreography.
05:47They understand the camera work.
05:48And then on top of that, they're funny.
05:50They understand that it can be funny when you fight too.
05:53So I'm so excited that the movie
05:56has really good action sequences in it,
05:58which is something that we weren't sure we could pull off.
06:00My favorite genre right now might be generational trauma.
06:04I wonder why you think that this movie
06:08or this story is so important to tell right now.
06:12It is true because it is happening right now, right?
06:15The world, because your generation is a generation
06:19that lives with overwhelming information
06:23and constant and nonstop.
06:25And for us, we look at you and go like,
06:28can you just hold on?
06:29I can't even do one task.
06:31And you guys are multitasking
06:33and pulling things out of everywhere.
06:36And it is hard to communicate
06:38when you're not on the same page.
06:41And I think that is one of the things.
06:42It's like the Daniels.
06:45They grew up with very strong women around them.
06:48And I think this is their story.
06:50This is their sort of like therapy as well,
06:52getting it out there, you know,
06:54and then working it through.
06:55Because at the end of the day,
06:57this generational trauma just needs to sit down
07:01and have a real conversation without judging each other
07:05on both sides, not just on one side.
07:08I think sometimes parents,
07:10because they have lived the experiences
07:13and what they are trying to say is like,
07:16don't make the mistakes that I did.
07:18Don't go down that path.
07:19And I think that is always the biggest miscommunication.
07:23It's like, you know, don't force me to be who you are
07:26because I am me.
07:28And this is a conversation to be had.
07:35I just want to just share with you
07:37what has happened in the last few years,
07:40you know, with Asian representation,
07:42you know, with Crazy Rich Asians
07:44and Shang-Chi and the farewell.
07:46I mean, here we are.
07:47I mean, I know, you know,
07:49things haven't moved as fast as we want,
07:52but with all sustainable improvements,
07:54you know, they happen gradually.
07:55And I'm just so hopeful that Hollywood is allowing us
08:02to tell stories like this.
08:05And that's why it's so important.
08:07And it's a testament to how, you know,
08:08why not just Asians,
08:10but all groups of people to be represented in entertainment.
08:13In my 70 years, you know,
08:15I've gone from when I started,
08:18it was not long after that,
08:20the exclusion act was still active.
08:23So I come from that era and now there's that feeling
08:28and we transcend into more of the part
08:32of the American society,
08:34you know, as being artists and accepted.
08:37And all of a sudden, right now,
08:39we're back into the other side when I started.
08:43And there's that, this kind of discrimination,
08:46you know, and I hate to see that.
08:48I've given my whole life to do films and TV,
08:52500 or more of them.
08:53And, you know, and you've accepted me
08:56as a part of your family.
08:58And these people, you know,
09:01they show you in this film,
09:02especially what their expression can mean
09:05to the community and to society and to the world.
09:08Early drafts of this,
09:11our producers rightfully were like,
09:12this is an unproducible script for the budget
09:15that we could, you know, possibly get.
09:18And so we did a lot of planning
09:22to try to make it manageable.
09:23So we shot six of eight weeks
09:26in one Simi Valley location
09:30and tried to use it
09:31in as many different ways as possible.
09:32We turned the cafeteria of that building
09:34into like a mini soundstage
09:36and we built the apartment set there.
09:38We built the inside of the sci-fi RV in there.
09:42And so we tried to do our best
09:43to just be really resourceful
09:47with the one location that we had.
09:49Yeah, and then our last week in the shoot,
09:51we ran around like crazy
09:52to get as many short locations as we could.
09:55My favorite day was,
09:57we rented this space in LA
10:00that just has like 30 very poorly built sets
10:05just pre-built in there.
10:07It looks like a high school theater production.
10:09Yeah, but with the right lighting,
10:11we could just run from room to room to room.
10:14And so we probably did like 20 or 30.
10:16Universes in that day.
10:17Yeah, in just one day.
10:19Amazing, I can't wait to show this to my own parents.
10:21I already have a date blocked out for all of us.
10:23That was great.
10:24Oh wow, thank you.
10:26Biggest compliment.
10:27Thank you.
10:28Thank you for your time.