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Where Is Stephanie Hsu Now? Starring in the New Dark Romantic Comedy Laid on Peacock
Laid stars Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet as two friends trying to track down a list of exes before they all die.
It’s always intriguing to witness the latest happenings in the career of Stephanie Hsu, who's probably best known for her Oscar nod for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Lately, she’s starring in the upcoming dark comedy Laid as Ruby, a woman whose exes are inexplicably dying in unusual ways. Co-star Zosia Mamet (Girls, Trolls Band Together) as Ruby's best friend AJ helps Hsu track down her exes so she can confront them about their impending fate. It’s just the type of absurd, wacky, and totally charming plotline that Hsu excels at — and you’ll be able to watch on December 19 when all eight episodes premiere on Peacock.
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So, who is Stephanie Hsu? From Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to her raunchy romcom Joy Ride, here’s everything to know about the actress.
Stephanie Hsu early career & mentor
Raised in Los Angeles by a single mom who immigrated from Taiwan, Hsu caught the acting bug early and started dancing and singing Spice Girls tunes on the playground in elementary school, she told the Los Angeles Times.
She went on to graduate from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2012 and trained at the Atlantic Theatre Company in Manhattan. It was at NYU that she met her mentor, the late composer, writer, and director Liz Swados, who shared advice that has helped guide her career.
“I learned from her that if you have a voice, you absolutely have to use it for good and it doesn’t have to be wholesome,” Hsu told The Wrap. “It can be wild and crazy but, hopefully on the other side of that, it is for the benefit of humanity.”
Stephanie Hsu made her Broadway debut in SpongeBob SquarePants
Rocking a purple beehive hairdo, the actress lit up the Broadway stage in 2017 as the evil computer wife Karen in the splashy SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. The Tony-nominated production was also the Broadway debut for actor Ethan Slater (of Wicked fame). A typical day began with waking up at 3 a.m. to hop on the subway to the theatre, where she would do her own makeup and hair, she revealed.
Hsu eventually bid adieu to Bikini Bottom, leaving the Broadway hit for New Jersey, a move that changed her career forever.
Stephanie Hsu became a role model for Asian American girls
The actress returned to a role she originated years before: Christine Canigula in Be More Chill, a sci-fi musical about high school angst. Despite a brief one-month run in New Jersey, the show became a viral sensation thanks to an adoring teen fanbase. It was the second-most talked-about musical on Tumblr in 2017 (behind Hamilton). Suddenly, Hsu was a role model for teens across the country, and she soon found herself back on Broadway when the production was transferred in 2019.
“When I first did it in New Jersey, it didn't clock in my mind, ‘Oh, I'm playing a female leading lady and I am Asian American and this is rare,’” she told Teen Vogue. “When I found out that we were transferring to Broadway, it was the first time that it really, truly hit me. I started crying because if I was younger and had a Christine Canigula who looked like me, it would have changed my entire perception of what was possible as a young, aspiring actress. I just didn't have that vision to look to."
Stephanie Hsu almost turned down her role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Hsu joined the TV retro drama The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in Season 3 as the character Mei Lin, who by the end of her run on the show was poised to become the new Mrs. Maisel after saying “yes” to Joel’s (Michael Zeglen) proposal.
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At first glance, Hsu admitted she was skeptical of the character.
“I was still scared of the jokes that I might find on the page — slanty eyes, broken English, a dragon lady in a high collar smoking a long cigarette pinched between curled red nails. Yes, my mind went there because I’ve seen every version of that Chinese woman portrayed,” she wrote in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter.
But playing Mei on the Emmy-winning series turned out to be “one of my greatest joys,” she said, citing her character’s “sass, her strength, and the excuse to flaunt fluency in both Mandarin and English at the pace of [show creator] Sherman-Palladino banter.”
Stephanie Hsu was actually “everywhere all at once”
After juggling Broadway and TV simultaneously, landing a part in Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once was a pivotal moment. Hsu earned the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for playing two roles: Joy Wang and her dimension-destroying villainous counterpart, Jobu Tupaki. The acclaimed film swept the Oscars in 2023 and personally held special significance for Hsu.
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“That was the first year where I finally admitted to myself that I was an actor,” the humble star told The New York Times. “I’ve always been a little bit punk rock — probably in an impostor syndrome way — where everything always felt like an accident: How did I stumble onto Broadway? How did I stumble onto this TV show? And to do a show on top of that, it asked so much of my discipline and rigor that I was like, 'OK, this is what I do.'"
Stephanie Hsu's character made Oscar history
Her role as Joy Wang was groundbreaking in other ways, too: Hsu, who identifies as queer, was the first actress to be nominated by the Academy for playing a lesbian, per LGBTQ Nation.
In 2023, she reunited with her Everything Everywhere co-star Ke Huy Quan for the Disney+ series adaptation of the graphic novel American Born Chinese. She also starred in the raunchy rom-com Joy Ride from Adele Kim, the co-writer of Crazy Rich Asians. This year, she dipped her toe into voice acting as the evil robot Vontra in The Wild Robot — which makes us wonder, is there anything she can’t do?
Laid premieres on Peacock on Thursday, December 19, 2024.
