While filming Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oscar-nominated actress Stephanie Hsu could sense the film would be a hit.

But ahead of the sci-fi comedy’s release, not everyone felt the same, Hsu told an audience of AU students at Washington College of Law’s Claudio Grossman Hall on February 21 as part of the inaugural Spirit of Change Week, sponsored by the Spirit and Traditions Board.

“Really powerful people were telling me, ‘Look, you guys did a really cute thing,’” Hsu said of the 2022 film that became her breakout role. “‘But no one’s going to watch it.’”

When the film with a mostly Asian cast grossed $110 million at the box office and took home seven Oscars, including best picture, Hsu learned key lessons about the act of changemaking. It requires perseverance and, often, a belief in what’s possible—even when others don’t share the same convictions.  

“At a certain point, you have to dream up the yeses that you can get behind and work 10 times harder to push those yeses through. And find your people who believe in those yeses and build towards them,” Hsu said.

Hsu spoke about making the arts more inclusive and took questions from students about Everything Everywhere’s depiction of the immigrant experience, her career and the importance of media representations of Asian Americans during the event.

Before her breakout role, Hsu was the first Asian American actor—and one of the first people of color—with a speaking role on the Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. While playing a character named Mei living in New York City’s Chinatown in the 1950s, Hsu recalled a Chinese American extra coming up to her on set and thanking her.

The extra told Hsu that her visibility on screen created more opportunities for people who look like her in the overwhelmingly White entertainment industry. That taught Hsu that individuals have important but unrealized power to inspire change.  

Hsu now applies the principle to her work as an executive producer and star of the Peacock comedy series Laid. Using her platform, Hsu has pushed for the set to put safeguards in place to reduce the amount of waste it produces.

“One of my favorite activists, Adrienne Maree Brown, likes to talk about how the small is a part of all, and how you do one thing is how you do everything,” Hsu said. “We as individuals have so much ability to make little change, and that little ripple only grows.”

Hsu’s discussion of changemaking was the marquee event during Spirit of Change Week, designed to bring together students to make a difference in the world. The festivities kicked off on February 20 with a multicultural dinner and a performance by Les Coeurs D’Afrique, AU’s African dance team. Following the Hsu event, students celebrated Clawed Z. Eagle’s birthday with cupcakes on February 22.

The student-run Spirit and Traditions Board was created to unite the campus community through programming and events that celebrate AU’s mission and traditions. In December, the group revived the Quad Scream, a pre-pandemic campus tradition to relieve stress and build community ahead of final exams.

“If we can create tradition, people will be more excited about AU,” said Delaney Denton, SPA/BA ’25, deputy director of operations for the Spirit of Traditions Board. “That’s the goal—that people look forward to being involved at AU.”