Stephanie Hsu should have known what she was in for when Nahnatchka Khan invited her to meet at a bagel shop in New York. Hsu had just wrapped up the whirlwind Oscar-winning ride that was Everything Everywhere All at Once and couldn’t seem to escape the breakfast food that was so thematic to that movie. “I’ve never asked them if this is true or not, but they picked a bagel place,” says Hsu of meeting with Khan and executive producer Jennifer Carreras, “and it felt like a Nahnatchka joke in hindsight.”
So was it? “Totally. I mean, of course,” says Khan with a laugh. “Nobody brought it up at the lunch, so it was just sort of the undercurrent of the whole lunch.”
Khan and Carreras were there to pitch Hsu a comedy about a young woman who finds out that everybody she’s slept with is dying—and in the order in which she slept with them. The series, which would be called Laid, is an adaptation of a 2011 Australian show by the same name—but Khan was hoping to dig a bit deeper beyond the fantastic premise. “That’s such a great hook,” she says. “Then what we really leaned into is the idea of how she is almost at the center of a fucked up rom-com. This is a woman in her 30s, and she’s been dating for a long time, and she’s had relationships. So it’s not that she hasn’t. But she just hasn’t found that thing.”
Hsu liked the concept but also gravitated toward digging deeper. “That feels so exciting to me, because I love rom-coms so much,” she says. “We’re outside of the golden age of Nora Ephron rom-coms, because I honestly think love is just a little bit more complicated now, and how people go about finding love is more complicated. So, I got really excited about using that as a way in and letting that be the center of our story.”
In Laid, which Vanity Fair can exclusively report will debut on Peacock on December 19, Hsu plays Ruby, an event planner still looking for her forever relationship. When she notices that her former lovers are dying in unusual ways, she and her roommate AJ (Zosia Mamet) must go back through Ruby’s sex timeline in order to unravel the mystery. The series, which Khan—known for sitcoms like Fresh Off the Boat and Young Rock—is co-showrunning with Sally Bradford McKenna, is a funny, whimsical, modern comedy that centers on a unique character doing her best while looking for love.
Ruby’s journey may be unique, but her investigation into why her past relationships didn’t work out will feel relatable to many. “To be honest, working on this show, made me really think about everyone that I’ve ever been with—you really just start to go through the Rolodex in your mind. Not necessarily having regrets, but you’re like, ‘Oh, I guess I could have done that differently,’” says Hsu. “Which I think is our hope for the audience as well, because love is such a mystery. You really could go in so many directions, and it’s unclear how you know when you know.”
In Laid, once Ruby and AJ realize that something weird is happening with Ruby’s exes, AJ makes a sex timeline on a whiteboard that traces all of Ruby’s past relationships. But that whiteboard was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to keeping all of Laid’s storylines straight. Khan says that the writers’ room had a separate whiteboard for each character, along with a “master” whiteboard that linked everyone. “We’re going into her past. She’s got to go backward and start to find these people. At the same time, we’re moving the love story forward, what’s happening to her in the present,” she says.
As Ruby digs deeper into her past, Khan had to walk a tricky tonal tightrope. This is, after all, a comedy, but one in which many of the characters are literally dying. “The challenge of the comedy was to not tip over too far,” she says. “You have to allow space for when this thing happens that it’s shocking and it’s surprising, but it still has to make sense in the world—it can’t be too jokey.”
Laid has many laugh-out-loud moments, often delivered by Hsu as awkward, often self-involved Ruby. Early in the series, Ruby makes a bad personal decision that will have repercussions throughout the show. “But she makes it from a place of feeling very insecure and very hurt and very untethered,” says Khan, who adds that even when Ruby is making bad choices, you’re still rooting for her—and that is due in large part to Hsu’s performance. “You couldn’t do the story that we’re doing, I think, with anybody else, because she brings a sense of reality to everything she does. She makes it feel lived-in and funny and vulnerable.”
As part of her homework for the show, Hsu watched at least one rom-com every week of the project’s nine-week shoot. She revisited the classics, like When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and The Wedding Singer. She also took seriously the responsibility of stepping into the first spot on the call sheet for the series. While Hsu has done notable supporting work in Everything Everywhere and the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Laid presented a new chapter for her as a lead actor. She thought back to when she appeared on the 2016 Hulu series The Path, which starred Aaron Paul. “I remember watching him and I was like, ‘Oh, that is how you be number one.’” she says. “I felt so excited, honestly, to be in a position where I got to bring my value systems to set. For me, being number one on the call sheet or the director or a creator, you are hosting the environment. You are establishing the company culture in a way.”
Early on, those involved with the show worried whether Ruby would be likable. “Even as they were pitching me Ruby, everybody was kind of like, ‘She’s selfish, she’s a narcissist. She’s made a lot of mistakes and she doesn’t know that she needs to look inward,’” says Hsu. “And I was like, ‘Okay, but I have to play her, so I have to figure out why I like her!’”
As Hsu discovered, Ruby is actually pretty put-together in most aspects of her life, including her job. It’s just her love life that’s a mess. “I think that is something that a lot of women relate to,” she says. “Maybe she is selfish, maybe she is imperfect, but maybe she’s also literally confused as to how a person is supposed to know [when it’s love]. If you’re telling me it’s not how it’s like in the movies and if she didn’t have it growing up, then how is she supposed to know when she knows?”
Though the series centers on Ruby trying to figure out why her lovers are dying, her examination of her past will lead to unexpected growth—and maybe the happy ending she’d been looking for all along. “All she wants is to be the center of a good love story—and she’s efforting to do so,” says Hsu. “But by the end, through the messes that she makes and the coming to terms that she has to do, she does become the center of the love story without even trying.”
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