Stephanie Hsu Described the Record-Breaking Number of Asian Nominees at This Year's Oscars as "Intergenerational Healing"

This year's Oscar nominations broke some records (and still managed to fall short for some movie fans), but nominee Stephanie Hsu told Entertainment Weekly that she saw major progress as she and other Asian actors and actresses received recognition. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Hsu were nominated for their roles in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Hong Chau also earned a nomination for her performance in The Whale.

After her nomination, Hsu mentioned that she re-watched her film for the very first time since it bowed in theaters and saw the acclaim as one way for her and other Asian performers to feel "healing" after going so long without nominations at the Academy Awards. Yeoh made history this year as the first Asian actor, ever, to be nominated in the Best Actress category and People adds that this year's ceremony marks the highest number of Asian nominees, ever. 

"I really wanted to do it as a blessing, as a ritual of recognition not only for myself but for the whole family that came together to make this movie, our crew and everyone," Hsu said. "I wanted to return to that little moment in time where we first made this thing, purely out of love for this story that we were telling before anyone really knew who any of us were. So that was a really healing moment to get to see it again, acknowledge how far we've come, and also just to be like, 'I fucking love our movie!' So many people tell me that they start sobbing right when it starts, and now I am that person too. Before anything even happens, I'm just like, 'Oh my God, look at this family. I know what they're about to go through!'"

"I am just really proud and really happy that not only our principal cast, but so much of our creative team was celebrated as well," she continued, adding another reason for the special celebration: "It's 11 nominations, and every single one is everyone's first time [...] I know that has not been an easy road for me, and she's had to go through that times 10. So it's pretty wild that we're having this moment together. Our movie is a lot about intergenerational trauma, but I feel like today we get to have a public-facing moment of intergenerational healing.

EW notes that in past years, Asian films like Parasite and Drive My Car received recognition, but not rarely in acting categories. Hsu will be reunited with her co-stars Yeoh and Quan in the upcoming Disney+ series American Born Chinese. 

"I do believe that it's going to be sustained," Hsu told EW of her hopes for continued Asian representation and recognition. "I think some changes are really happening, and I think today was a really big deal because of that. I mean, again, you really think about it and you're like, '95 years is a really long time for there to hardly be any Asian actresses nominated for Best Actress.' That is our collective history, but that history is also being broken."