Stephanie Hsu agreed to star in the Peacock series Laid, which she gleefully describes as "a fucked-up rom-com, basically," after an inspiring discussion with executive producer-coshowrunner-writer Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off the Boat) and executive producer Jennifer Carreras (Young Rock) at a New York City bagel shop.
"They were both so funny and the pilot [script] was so great that I felt very honored to be asked," she reflects.
Hsu didn't see any significance in Khan's choice of meeting place at the time, though she now muses, "I assume that she did it as a wink and a nod and a nudge-nudge to Everything Everywhere." Remember that trippy bagel scene from Everything Everywhere All at Once, the 2023 Oscar-winner for Best Picture? Hsu's dual role as Joy Wang Jobu Tupaki earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Prior to that breakout part, she'd been building up a TV résumé that includes Girl Code, The Path and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A native of Torrance, California, and graduate of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Hsu also starred in Broadway musicals Be More Chill and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical.
On Laid, based on an Australian series of the same name, she plays Ruby, a woman forced to examine her romantic history because her former lovers are dying, one by one.
While Hsu says she is "not by any means a method actor," she did mull over her own past while shooting the show, which debuts all eight episodes on December 19. “There was definitely a moment midseason where I was like, ‘Wow, I’m going through my own list [of exes], and this is bringing up some stuff!’”
She bonded immediately with Zosia Mamet (Girls), who plays AJ, Ruby’s BFF. “The two of us are undercover theater nerds,” says Hsu, who studied at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company — which Mamet’s father, playwright David Mamet, cofounded.
Laid marks Hsu’s first time as an executive producer. She says she wanted more than just a credit and praises her fellow EPs, including coshowrunner Sally Bradford McKenna (The Grinder), for involving her in everything from casting to breaking story.
"Right now, there’s a handful of projects I want to make," Hsu says, "and that's a lot of the reason why I wanted to learn as much as I could on Laid. Just to understand what it takes to put a show together, to put a team together, kindly and with grace."
Laid is now streaming on Peacock.
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #13, 2024, under the title "Ex Factor."
