While expectations are high for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness this summer, it’s not the only multiverse movie coming this year. And Marvel’s universe-hopping adventure will have its work cut out to be madder than Everything Everywhere All At Once – the latest film from Swiss Army Man directors Daniels (aka Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert). They pair have followed up their ‘Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse’ movie with a film that throws Michelle Yeoh’s laundromat owner Evelyn into a multiverse of infinite possibilities. The result is an existential sci-fi kung-fu odyssey about, well, life, the universe, and everything. Among the alternate realities Evelyn encounters are all kinds of absurd existences – including one in which humans have evolved with floppy hot-dog fingers, resulting in one of the wildest romantic scenes ever committed to film.
For Yeoh, she quite literally didn’t believe was she was reading. “I honestly thought it was a big joke,” she admits. “I wanted to convince the Daniels to write it out of the film.” Equally baffled was Jamie Lee Curtis, who also donned sausage fingers for the scene. “I think the two of us looked at each other and were like, ‘Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck this is’,” says Curtis. “But clearly these guys do. And they know it so well. You just surrender.” The sequence required total commitment to the bit – with the Daniels and their stars having to take the alternate dimensions seriously. “We went into the different universes believing: that this is the real universe,” says Yeoh. “We have to live that moment and live how they would – even though, yes, they had weird digits.” And though the pair were skeptical at first, the results proved profound. “There’s a part of that sequence that was as moving for me as an actor as anything I’ve ever done,” says Curtis. “At the same time, we have hot-dog fingers and I use my feet as my affection tool.”
For both stars, the insanity of the script was a draw as much as anything. “I had never read anything so crazy,” says Yeoh. “I couldn’t even wrap my head around that whole concept. I’m a dinosaur – I don’t really know how to get online and Google things. They had me going, ‘Maybe I don’t really understand, but you know what? They have intrigued me.’ And I love a challenge.” And though Curtis “couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on” in the screenplay, there was a clear incentive for her to sign up. “The script was weird,” she says. “But the entire reason that I said yes to this little tiny weird movie was because I was getting to work with Michelle Yeoh. They say, ‘You had me at hello’ – well, they had me at Michelle Yeoh.”
Read Empire’s full headfirst dive into Everything Everywhere All At Once in the May 2022 issue – on sale Thursday 17 March, and available to pre-order online here. The film is coming to UK cinemas later this year.