Nicole Kidman championed her voice: Expats director Lulu Wang reveals all on Hong Kong-set series

“Can I take a picture of you?” says Lulu Wang, reaching for her camera. What she plans to do with my mugshot, along with those of everyone else interviewing her today in London’s Charlotte Street Hotel, is hard to say. But it’s hard to turn down such a request there on the spot. After the success of her 2019 breakout film The Farewell, she’s back behind the camera, shouldering Expats, a new, Hong Kong-set six-part TV series starring and executive produced by Nicole Kidman. Adapted from Janice Y.K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates, the story follows three women living in Hong Kong in 2014, whose lives are bonded by tragedy. Kidman plays Margaret, an American mother-of-three who is crushed by guilt and pain after her youngest son disappears. Then there’s Korean-American Mercy (newcomer Ji-young Yoo), who was meant to be looking after the boy. And Hilary (Indian-American Sarayu Blue), Margaret’s neighbour, whose inability to conceive is wrecking her marriage. Farewell director Lulu Wang slams Ron Howard pick for film on Chinese pianist Wang was approached about adapting Lee’s book while she was still riding the immense wave of The Farewell’s success. Her award-winning Chinese family comedy-drama grossed US$23 million worldwide from a US$3 million budget. At the time the film’s success, which exceeded all her expectations, was hard to process. “I felt incredibly blessed and also a bit like, ‘Now what?’” admits Wang. But despite all the acclaim, she felt uncertain about taking on a bigger project. “My goal is to have a body of work that I’m really proud of and I think the only way to do that, this early in my career, is to just keep working at a scale and a size where I can control the creative output.” With that in mind, Wang initially passed on Expats, fearing she might lose her autonomy. “I love the book. I really love the book,” she says. “I just didn’t know how to direct one episode of a whole series. I didn’t know what the process would be. “And so when I started talking to Nicole, I said, ‘I love the book, but this is how I see it, I think I would just have to make it like a movie, where I would direct all of them. I’m not sure how to do it any other way.’ And she was like, ‘Great. Let’s do that.’ “That was it. And I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, OK, well, I guess I can’t really say no now!’” When we meet, 40-year-old Wang has come to the London Film Festival to present the fifth episode, “Central”, to audiences. The longest instalment by far – at 96 minutes – it also moves the story beyond the three core women. Instead, it follows Margaret’s Filipino nanny, Essie (Ruby Ruiz), and Hilary’s helper, Puri (Hong Kong singer Amelyn Pardenilla), as they head out to the park on a Sunday, their day off, to sit and chat with other domestic workers, something Wang witnessed in Hong Kong while researching the series. An episode that widens the context beyond the central, well-heeled characters, it shows the perspectives of Essie and Puri, also non-locals but with no expat autonomy or civil rights. When I go to Hong Kong, I’m an expat. An American expat. I’m definitely not a local. I don’t speak Cantonese. But I am Han Chinese, you know? Lulu Wang “It was the first thing I pitched when I started talking to Nicole,” says Wang. “I said, ‘I’ll do the show but only if I can do this fifth episode, and I want it to work as a stand-alone,’” she says. “I want people to be able to watch it on its own without the context of the rest of the show. But I also want it to fit as a part of the whole. It was really interesting to try to do both, right?” Raised by her Chinese diplomat father and her mother, former cultural critic and editor at the Beijing Literary Gazette, Wang moved with her family to Miami in the United States from Beijing in 1989, around the time of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. She was six. Her knowledge of Hong Kong was slight. “I didn’t really go to Hong Kong, I went to Shanghai a lot, and Beijing, and saw mostly mainland [China], but when I got older, I travelled to Hong Kong a few times just to spend time there.” 11 emerging Asian women film and TV directors, from Beef’s Hikari to Domee Shi Perhaps unexpectedly, it all left her confused about her own identity. “I always say that when I moved to America, I came over as a Chinese immigrant, so in America, I didn’t really belong and I had to learn English. And yet when I go back to Asia now, I don’t belong there any more either. “I’ve been away for so long, and particularly when I go to Hong Kong, I’m an expat. An American expat. I’m definitely not a local. I don’t speak Cantonese. But I am Han Chinese, you know? “So there’s a lot of overlap, culturally. It’s this weird feeling of, ‘What am I here?’ And that’s what I wanted to portray.” After spending a year in Hong Kong researching, Wang decided the city was the perfect backdrop for what she wanted to say, “Because I think Hong Kong is this great microcosm of what our society is becoming more and more, which is that you can’t simplify people to an identity based on what you see and what they look like. Or even what language they speak.” “People have just such complex identities because so many are leaving their home countries for various reasons. I just wanted to explore the people who live in diaspora around the globe.” Not only was Wang inspired by Lee’s book, but also by her global press tour for The Farewell, which took her through Europe and out to Australia. “Everywhere I landed, there was a huge Chinese-American, Asian-American community. But it would suddenly be like Asian-Americans who speak with a British accent; Asian-Americans who speak with an Australian accent. But that is the world today. And so this is the diaspora. “So that’s what I thought could be a unique perspective to explore in Hong Kong.” The purpose behind Nicole Kidman’s psychedelic Nine Perfect Strangers Another reason Wang wanted to do the series was to show how much Hong Kong has evolved. “We felt a responsibility in capturing Hong Kong because it’s already changed so much. And it is continuing to change, to disappear.” A case in point was the popular Mido Cafe, on Temple Street in Kowloon, which temporarily closed last year. “When we were shooting there, the owner was talking to me about how hard it was for him to run the restaurant, even though he loved it. And it’s a staple in Hong Kong, but [he explained] the battles he had been fighting, [with] the rent going up.” Unsurprisingly, Wang says she misses Hong Kong’s array of culinary experiences since returning to the US. Staying in Tai Hang, on Hong Kong Island, “we had a lot of favourite places”, she says. “There were all these little yakitori places. It almost felt like Kyoto. And there was this restaurant called Mustard. It’s almost like a brasserie, and I would go there a lot because I knew the owner, who was a local. “I was just astounded by the clientele. There was just something about it … I felt like, I don’t get to experience this in Los Angeles.” Hong Kong viewers will also appreciate the nod to filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, and his seminal 2000 movie In the Mood for Love. One scene in Expats sees some characters arguing, amusingly, over who is the director of the film – Wong or his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle. The thing that was driving me was I knew that there was this political element that I felt so passionately about and that I wanted to portray Lulu Wang “You can’t really go to Hong Kong without [experiencing that film],” says Wang. “That was my reference and my homage, I guess … a little nod to both Wong Kar-wai and Christopher Doyle.” Shooting in Hong Kong wasn’t easy, especially given filming was conducted under the tough Covid-19 restrictions. “We had to do these quarantines and get visas to go film there. All of that was challenging. “Also, once we were there, we couldn’t leave. Nobody could leave, because then you’d have to do the quarantine again.” ‘Is there another reality?’ Nicole Kidman on Nine Perfect Strangers Wang and other members of her team each spent more than 50 days in isolation before being able to shoot. Kidman, however, was granted a quarantine exemption, to uproar from many Hong Kong residents. This wasn’t the only controversy the production faced. The team were forced to deny a rift between Kidman and Wang, who were reportedly spotted arguing while filming in a street market, although today Wang has nothing but good things to say about Kidman. “In development, she was incredibly supportive in championing my voice and allowing me to write the script in a way that’s quite untraditional: it doesn’t follow a linear timeline, it delves into politics. So that was incredibly helpful, to have her support … “Then once we’re in production, she really leans into just being an actor.” The politics also led to criticism for Wang. While the show touches on the 2014 “umbrella revolution”, the production was criticised for focusing on an elite expat community at a time when political tensions in the city were on the rise, following the pro-democracy protests in 2019 and the sweeping National Security Law that Beijing imposed on the city thereafter. Wang admits the negative comments stung. As she told Vanity Fair recently: “The thing that was driving me was I knew that there was this political element that I felt so passionately about and that I wanted to portray.” Whether Wang will return to television remains to be seen. “Maybe not for a while,” she says, “because I was working on this for over three years. And I don’t know that I’m going to have this kind of freedom always. “I’m open to all experiences. Wherever I feel I can have the most creative freedom to do something unique and take a few risks, that’s where I’m gonna go. “My next thing is a film for sure. I’m looking forward to something really nimble, being on set for a short period of time, editing, and then, boom! It’s done.” Expats streams on Prime Video from January 26.

Nicole Kidman championed her voice: Expats director Lulu Wang reveals all on Hong Kong-set series

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Chinese-American filmmaker Lulu Wang talks about the challenges she faced making the Hong Kong-set Expats, and how star Nicole Kidman supported her approach

Chinese-American filmmaker Lulu Wang talks about the challenges she faced making the Hong Kong-set Expats, and how star Nicole Kidman supported her approach