The multiverse film All Everywhere, All At Once stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, a downtrodden laundry owner who is on a mission to save reality itself. But she was not the first candidate for this role.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan explained that the lead role was originally written for martial arts star Jackie Chan.
“At first we thought, ‘An action movie with a dude in it,'” Scheinert said.
“We’re having trouble defining the role of a father,” Kwan added. “And one of us started wondering what would happen if we take the character of Michelle and fail it and she becomes the main character. And the film just opened in a completely different way.”
Michelle Yeoh was originally cast as the main character’s wife… but the filmmakers decided to make her the main character instead.
“We have very strong mothers and grandmothers, and we are both lethargic, gentle guys,” Scheinert said. “Once we changed it, we thought, ‘Oh, now the husband and wife characters are closer. Why didn’t we write it like that from the beginning?”
Of course, it’s easy to see how Chan brought his trademark charm to the role of an ordinary person tasked with saving the multiverse.
But now that the roles have been reversed, it’s time to rethink who will play the husband, who the directors also thought would be a good fit for a Jackie Chan-type actor. In a separate interview with Vulture, Kwan revealed how he eventually decided to recast the role.
“The hardest part about finding this role was that it required a lot of different skills,” Kwan said. “He had to speak Cantonese, Chinese, English. He must have known martial arts. But it also had to be an incredibly believable sentimental trinket. One day on Twitter, I saw a picture of Ke Quan as Shorty. My brain was thinking, “What is this guy doing right now?”
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