Stephanie Hsu: Oscar Nom Opened the Door for Me to Play This Sex-Cursed Hot Mess

Stephanie Hsu broke through and landed her first Oscar nomination three years ago in Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. That film had some oddball laughs for sure, but if you had only seen her in the dual roles of the diminutive Joy Wang and villainous Jobu Tupaki, you would have no idea she was capable of playing a classic rom-com lead like she does in the new Peacock series Laid.

In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Hsu talks about how a background in comedy helped prepare her to portray a deeply flawed character who discovers that all of the men she has slept with are dying and why getting cast in the show felt like a “huge step” in the fight for representation on TV.

She also gets into the wild journey from her audition for Everything Everywhere to the Oscars, explains why she turned down the chance to possibly play Glinda in Wicked, and teases her upcoming buddy comedy with Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson.

Hsu immediately latched onto the “twisted rom-com” premise of Laid when she read the script but started getting a little nervous when she realized just how big of a “narcissist” her character Ruby was on the page. “I think everyone’s concern, even before they attached an actor, was how are we going to like Ruby?” Ultimately, Hsu says she found her character’s struggles to find love “relatable,” adding, “I like watching women be wildly imperfect.”

The chance to play this type of flawed protagonist on television stems directly from the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once. “Getting to do something like Laid is a hundred percent because of wins like that,” she says. And it was even more meaningful to her that the role of Ruby was not written as an Asian-American character.

“I really do hope that the discourse around identity starts to evolve from ‘only-ism,’” Hsu says, pointing to the reception of her 2023 comedy film Joy Ride as “the Asian Bridesmaids.”

She recalls thinking, “Can’t it just be Joy Ride?”

“So that’s one of my favorite things about Laid is that [Ruby] is a female lead, a romantic lead, flawed, and race has nothing to do with it—other than her last name is Yao,” she adds. “And that feels like a huge step in terms of what the fabric of storytelling looks like.”

Getting nominated for an Oscar at just 32 has allowed Hsu, who made her Broadway debut in 2016’s SpongeBob SquarePants musical, to turn down opportunities that she could never have dreamed of getting just a few years ago. When I ask if, as she recently admitted, she really said no to an audition to play Glinda in director John M. Chu’s Wicked—the role that is likely to garner Ariana Grande her first Oscar nomination and a possible win—Hsu laughs and replies, “Do you think I would lie?”

“I don’t feel like a Glinda, I really don’t,” Hsu explains. “I’ve got quirks and stuff, but I don’t feel so bubbly. I cannot imagine myself floating down in a bubble. And Ariana is amazing, I really mean it, she’s giving Lucille Ball-level type of comedic performance. It’s unreal.”

Asked if she would have wanted to play the role of Elphaba that went to Cynthia Erivo—especially given the fact that she performed the song “I’m Not That Girl” at a live Wicked concert in 2021—Hsu hesitated for a second or two longer before giving her deferential answer.

“Those roles are so iconic, and for me, I just know what that requires, and I don’t think I was able to serve it,” she says, diplomatically. “I saw Cynthia in her first Broadway show [The Color Purple] and I’ll never forget it. It just had to be her.”

With that, Hsu pauses to recognize she should probably stop downplaying her talents for anyone in the industry who might be listening. “People on my team would probably be like, you need to stop doing that,” she says before inadvertently alluding to an iconic Elphaba line: “It’s not me.”

Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.