Lulu Wang (‘Expats’ showrunner) on the power of Nicole Kidman as your star: ‘Everybody was given this opportunity to take a huge leap in their career’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Everybody wanted to up their game and make sure that they were on an equal playing field to Nicole. They definitely felt that pressure,” declares “Expats” creator Lulu Wang about what it meant to the entire production to be led by a superstar like Nicole Kidman. For our recent webchat she adds, “It was a really beautiful thing that we were this very close-knit family. Everybody was given this opportunity to take a huge leap in their career.” We talked with Wang as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2024 awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: Sarayu Blue (‘Expats’)
“Expats” was created and directed by BAFTA nominee Wang (“The Farewell”), based on the 2016 novel “The Expatriates” by Janice Y. K. Lee. The six-episode limited series deftly explores the impact of grief and loss on a group of people living far away from home, who become inextricably linked by unforeseeable tragedy. The series revolves around three expatriate American women in Hong Kong — Oscar and Emmy winner Kidman stars as grief-stricken mother Margaret, with Sarayu Blue starring as Margaret’s expat neighbor Hilary whose life is spiraling out of control, and Ji-young Yoo starring as Mercy, a troubled young woman trying to make ends meet. Jack Huston (“Boardwalk Empire”) also co-stars as Hilary’s cheating husband David, with Brian Tee co-starring as Margaret’s grief-stricken husband Clarke.
Despite having a stellar cast and crew supporting her creative vision, Wang admits to some initial self-doubt before production on the Amazon Prime Video series started. “I had a lot of my own hesitations, to be honest, because I wasn’t even sure,” Wang says about her first foray into creating a high-profile streaming television series. “What is ‘show running’ exactly? I’m taking on show running, but I’m also taking on the role of directing and running a writer’s room when I hadn’t been in a writer’s room before. So I just came into it with a lot of hesitancy because I wanted to make sure that I could wear all of these hats and still do all of them well and make sure that I was doing it responsibly,” she explains. “The scope of it just felt really enormous and the stamina also of being on set for that many days, well over 100 days compared to shooting an indie film, which is 26 days. So that was where my original hesitancy came from, but I have to say, I got such great feedback and tremendous support from both Amazon and Nicole to do this and I asked all of the stupid questions,” she smiles humbly. “I want to make sure we don’t hit a point where everybody’s burned out and we’re only a quarter of the way through. So how do we anticipate some of that? Are we going to have enough prep time? How do you prep for 100-something days or do you prep for a certain amount and then stop, go on hiatus, prep some more? I think it was just really important to ask all of those questions.”
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