One day, amid everything Wang is dealing with, she is recruited to defeat an evil force that threatens the multiverse. Why? Of all the Evelyn Wangs in the multiverse, where other versions of herself are more successful women, like an internationally celebrated movie star (another multiverse is inhabited by people with hotdogs for fingers, might we add), the launderette version is the one who has made all the worst possible decisions until that point in her life, which is why she has the most potential to save the world.

The film, which features a predominantly Asian cast, is written and directed by “the Daniels”—Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, whose last feature was 2016’s Swiss Army Man, in which Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent corpse. When Kwan and Scheinert pitched their idea to Yeoh at the Beverly Wilshire in 2018, where she was attending the premiere of Crazy Rich Asians, the actress told the directors that she found their idea very weird.

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The Daniels originally wanted comedy action star Jackie Chan to play the lead and Yeoh as his wife. But they decided to reverse the roles and make Yeoh the protagonist. Immediately, they knew it was the right move, as Scheinert told The Hollywood Reporter: “[Kwan and I] have these very strong moms and grandmoms, and we’re also both kind of dopey, gentle guys ourselves. As soon as we switched it, we were like, ‘Oh, now the husband and wife characters are more relatable. Why on earth didn’t we write it this way from the get-go?’”

For Yeoh, filming Everything was a new experience, not only because it was a departure from her previously more stoic, overtly heroic roles, but also due to the underlying slapstick tone to the film, whose brand of humour mixes cinematic references with throwaway gags. She characteristically threw herself in headfirst, performing her own stunts, just as she always has done, in a film that revels in its chaos and absurdity.

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