On Jan. 24, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and their "Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert met on a video call to watch the announcement of the Oscar nominations together, and as the sci-fi hit racked up each of its stunning 11 nominations, the group would toast, gasp, cheer and yell.
"It was so loud, we could barely hear what anyone was saying,” says a laughing Quan, who received his first Oscar nomination for playing Waymond Wang, the sweet-natured husband to Yeoh’s multiverse-saving laundromat owner. How did he react when his name was read?
"I was jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my voice, exactly the same way that I did when I got the phone call from my agent that the Daniels wanted me to play Waymond,” Quan says during a phone interview conducted a half-hour after the announcement. He describes the nomination day as one of the happiest days of his life. "It’s so surreal. I am ecstatic.”