## The Script That Arrived
The script was *Everything Everywhere All at Once*, written and to be directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — known collectively as the Daniels — for A24, the independent production and distribution company that had carved out a reputation for releasing distinctive, risk-taking films.
The project had come to Ke Huy Quan via a particular piece of internet archaeology. Daniel Kwan had seen a GIF of Quan as Short Round on Twitter — a clip of the child actor from *Temple of Doom* circulating decades after the film’s release — and thought: where is this person? What happened to him? Kwan sought out Quan and asked him to audition for the role of Waymond Wang.
Waymond Wang, in *Everything Everywhere All at Once*, is Evelyn Wang’s husband — a mild-mannered, apparently ordinary man who is also, in various alternate universes, a suave CEO, a mystical warrior, and the emotional center of the film’s sweeping argument about love, regret, and multiversal possibility. The character exists in multiple versions simultaneously, requiring an actor who could be convincingly gentle, convincingly capable, and convincingly heartbreaking in the same film. He needed to speak English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. He needed martial arts skills. He needed something harder to describe: the quality that makes an audience root for a person even when they can’t explain exactly why.
Quan read the script. “It was a role that I thought was written for me,” he said. He wanted it more than anything.
He prepared with an intensity that reflects both how much the role meant to him and how seriously he takes the craft. He hired an acting coach. A voice coach. A dialogue coach. A body movement coach — he had been inspired by reading about Margot Robbie’s preparation for her roles, specifically the way she used physical preparation to find character. For each version of Waymond, he chose an animal: a squirrel for the frazzled, tax-season Waymond, a fox for the slick CEO Waymond, an eagle for the warrior-alpha Waymond. He taped photographs of these animals to his wall. He studied videos. He watched Jackie Chan films to prepare for the action sequences.