Dear Gossips,    

Back in February during award season, at the Independent Spirit Awards, Quinta Brunson and Stephanie Hsu presented together. They held hands walking on stage, they were adorable backstage, and maybe we should have known then that it was only a matter of time…

 

It was announced this week that Quinta and Stephanie will star together in a new comedy called Par for the Course. Quinta is cowriting the script with her creative partner Justin Tan with whom she also works on Abbott Elementary. So basically she’s teaming up with her work husband and her work wife. 

 

The film will also be Justin’s feature directorial debut. Quinta and Justin go way back, like from their Buzzfeed days. So, to borrow from Drake, it’s another example of starting from the bottom, now we’re here. Coming up with your friends, more and more, is the way to do it. And it’s not like this is a new concept – Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were the poster boys for it 25 years ago – but these are new faces who are creating opportunities for themselves to walk that path, a path that was otherwise unavailable or unwelcoming not too long ago. 

 

As for Stephanie, what’s notable to me about this project is that it’ll be the third film in the last four years in which she’s had a principle role where she’s worked with an Asian director – Everything Everywhere All At Once, Joy Ride, and now the upcoming Par for the Course. She just made a cameo in Sean Wang’s Didi and she’s also been featured in several other projects in movies and television involving Asian creatives and producers behind the scenes. It might be a stretch, right now, to say that this is “normal” for her, but at the same time, it’s not the exception. This is encouraging, it’s exciting, and hopefully it’s infectious. 

Speaking of Joy Ride – which is one of my favourite movies of 2023, it gets funnier and funnier every time I watch it – it was produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey. And Par for the Course is also being produced by Point Grey. Seth and company are quietly modelling diversity and inclusion. 

Can Par for the Course pleeeeeeasseeeee be about golf?! 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey