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Breakthrough Entertainer: Stephanie Hsu, Now Everywhere 

Stephanie Hsu arrives at the Governors Awards on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022, at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (AP)
Stephanie Hsu arrives at the Governors Awards on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022, at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Breakthrough Entertainer: Stephanie Hsu, Now Everywhere 

Stephanie Hsu arrives at the Governors Awards on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022, at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (AP)
Stephanie Hsu arrives at the Governors Awards on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022, at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. (AP)

Dressed as Elvis and nonchalantly walking a pig on a leash, Stephanie Hsu made a memorable big screen impression this year. 

Hsu actually had two roles in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," playing both a sullen teen and an intergalactic supervillain for a film that can best be called a fantastical science fiction comedy-drama. 

With Michelle Yeoh joining Hsu as her onscreen mother, the indie film has garnered critical acclaim, hit over $100 million in global ticket sales and has sparked Oscar buzz. 

"The movie is so special because we could not have possibly expected this to have happened and so we were really able to just throw paint at the wall," Hsu said. "It came from a very raw place with zero expectations, only trying to tell the story as deeply and honestly as we can." 

Hsu's performance — combining deep hurt with a real skill with nunchucks while rocking sequin-lined eyes — has made her one of The Associated Press’ Breakthrough Entertainers of the Year alongside Joaquina Kalukango, Sadie Sink, Tenoch Huerta, Iman Vellani and more. 

"I have been working for a really long time and I guess that’s what a breakout is: You chip away and then all of a sudden, there’s one thing that everyone is like, ‘That’s the thing that put you on the map.’" 

Hsu was a Broadway veteran with a few TV credits when she worked with the writing and directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for an episode of "Norah From Queens." 

Working with Kwan and Scheinert — know as The Daniels — was a revelation for Hsu and when they contacted her about "Everything Everywhere All at Once" she never hesitated. 

"We’re like artistic soulmates in so many ways," she said. "When I read the script, in so many ways, it actually made a lot of sense to me weirdly enough. I don’t know what that says about me." 

The film begins with Yeoh as a struggling laundromat owner who is being audited by the IRS and has a strained relationship with her daughter. The story gets surreal when she discovers she has to connect with parallel universes to prevent cataclysmic destruction, also involving her daughter. It's also a family drama, with richness in the complex love between relations. 

"This movie, in so many ways, embodies what I love to do as an artist. So it feels like the most honest handshake I could make with Hollywood," she said. 

"I think art at its very best offers some help in processing or helping us move through a very confusing world and offer some healing. And that is ultimately the type of work that I want to make." 

Hsu began her acting career on Broadway, where she played Karen the Computer in "SpongeBob the Musical," and Christine Canigula in "Be More Chill." She was born in California and moved to New York to study at New York University, graduating in 2012. 

She showed off her work ethic by combining a punishing eight-show-a-week Broadway schedule with filming "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" on Mondays, her only day off. 

"The discipline that forced me into, I think, really prepared me for everything that has happened since. And I feel really grateful that I was given the opportunity to work that hard," she said. 

Hsu will next be seen in Rian Johnson’s Peacock anthology series "Poker Face," alongside Natasha Lyonne and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. She’ll also star opposite Ashley Park in "JFC," a raunchy, R-rated comedy directed by Adele Lim. 

"What I’m excited to do next, honestly, is to develop more of my own work," she said. "In order to make this career sustainable and joyful is to be able to dig in and not always just fill shoes for someone else." 

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JoJo Was a Teen Sensation. At 33, She’s Found Her Voice Again

Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
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JoJo Was a Teen Sensation. At 33, She’s Found Her Voice Again

Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)
Singer Joanna Levesque, who rose to fame as “JoJo” when she was 13, poses for a portrait to promote her memoir, “Over the Influence,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in New York. (Invision/AP)

Joanna Levesque shot to stardom at 13. Two decades later, “JoJo” — as she’s better known — has written a memoir and says the song responsible for her meteoric rise, “Leave (Get Out),” was foreign to her. In fact, she cried when her label told her they wanted to make it her first single.

Lyrics about a boy who treated her poorly were not relatable to the sixth grader who recorded the hit. And sonically, the pop sound was far away from the young prodigy's R&B and hip-hop comfort zone.

“I think that’s where the initial seed of confusion was planted within me, where I was like, 'Oh, you should trust other people over yourself because ... look at this. You trusted other people and look how big it paid off,’” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

“Leave (Get Out)” went on to top the Billboard charts, making Levesque the youngest solo artist ever to have a No. 1 hit.

“I grew to love it. But initially, I just didn’t get it,” she said.

Much of Levesque’s experience with young pop stardom was similarly unpredictable or tumultuous, and she details those feelings in her new memoir, “Over the Influence.”

With “Leave (Get Out)” and her several other commercial hits like “Too Little Too Late” and “Baby It’s You,” Levesque’s formative years were spent in recording studios and tour buses. Still, she had a strong resonance with teens and young people, and her raw talent grabbed the attention of music fans of all ages.

“Sometimes, I don’t know what to say when people are like, ‘I grew up with you’ and I’m like, ‘We grew up together’ because I still am just a baby lady. But I feel really grateful to have this longevity and to still be here after all the crazy stuff that was going on,” she said.

Some of that “crazy stuff” Levesque is referring to is a years-long legal battle with her former record label. Blackground Records, which signed her as a 12-year-old, stalled the release of her third album and slowed down the trajectory of her blazing career.

Levesque said she knows, despite the hurdles and roadblocks the label and its executives put in her path, they shaped “what JoJo is."

“Even though there were things that were chaotic and frustrating and scary and not at all what I would have wanted to go through, I take the good and the bad,” she said.

Levesque felt like the executives and team she worked with at the label were family, describing them as her “father figures and my uncles and my brothers." “I love them, now, still, even though it didn’t work out,” she said.

With new music on the way, Levesque said she thinks the industry is headed in a direction that grants artists more freedom over their work and more of a voice in discussions about the direction of their careers. In 2018, she re-recorded her first two albums, which were not made available on streaming, to regain control of the rights. Three years later, Taylor Swift started doing the same.

“Things are changing and it’s crumbling — the old way of doing things,” she said. “I think it’s great. The structure of major labels still offers a lot, but at what cost?”

As she looks forward to the next chapter of her already veteran-level career, Levesque said it’s “refreshing” for her to see a new generation of young women in music who are defying the standards she felt she had to follow when she was coming up.

“'You have to be nice. You have to be acceptable in these ways. You have to play these politics of politeness.’ It’s just exhausting,” she said, “So many of us that grew up with that woven into the fabric of our beliefs burn out and crash and burn.”

It’s “healing” to see artists like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish play by their own rules, she said.

In writing her memoir and tracing her life from the earliest childhood memories to today, Levesque said she’s “reclaiming ownership” over her life.

“My hope is that other people will read this, in my gross transparency sometimes in this book, and hopefully be inspired to carve their own path, whatever that looks like for them.”