Everything Everywhere All at Once star Michelle Yeoh bagged her first Golden Globe and she won’t let anyone take away the golden moment from her. Yeoh won her first Golden Globe on Tuesday for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once and the actress jokingly told the awards show’s producers to “shut up” after trying to cut her speech short.
“I’m just going to stand here and take this all in,” she said as she held the trophy. “40 years… I’m not letting go of this. Narrating her early days of career, she said, “I remember when I first came to Hollywood, it was a dream come true until I got here because look at this face. I came here and was told, ‘You’re a minority.’”
She continued, “I said I know that’s not possible and then someone said to me, ‘You speak English?’ I mean, forget about them not knowing Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Asia, India. And then I said, ‘Yeah, the flight here was about 13 hours long, so I learned.”
“As time went by, I turned 60 – last year – and I think all of you women understand this as the days, the years, and the numbers get bigger, it seems like opportunities start to get smaller as well. And it probably was at a time where I thought, ‘Hey, come on, girl, you had a really, really good run, you worked with some of the best people.
Yeoh went on to name some acclaimed directors she got to work with including Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Dan Boyle. “And so, it’s good, it’s all good,” she said before adding, “Then along came the best gift, Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Soon music cued midway through her remarks and she joked, “Shut up, please. I can beat you up okay. And that’s serious,” she said adding, “Thank you A24 for believing in these two goofy, insanely smart, wonderful geniuses, [directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert], who had the courage to write about a very ordinary immigrant, aging woman, mother, daughter.”
“I was given this gift of playing this woman who resonated so deeply with me and with so many people because, at the end of the day, in whatever universe she was at, she was fighting for love, for her family,” she continued.
As Yeoh went on to give a shout out to her Everything Everywhere All at Once co-stars, she ended her speech by dedicating the award to “all the shoulders I stand on, all who came before me, who looks like me, and all who are going on this journey with me forward.”
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the story of an exhausted Chinese American Woman who is swept up in an insane multidimensional adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.
