‘It’s a story about women’: Lulu Wang on her new Prime Video series ‘Expats’

PARK CITY, Utah (ABC4) — Premiering this week on Prime Video, “Expats” is the new series from “The Farewell” director Lulu Wang.

ABC4 film critic Patrick Beatty spoke with director Lulu Wang as well as actors Brian Tee and Jack Huston about taking on the subject matter and what inspired them to want to join.

The series, based on the novel “The Expatriates” by Janice Y. K. Lee, stars Nicole Kidman in a close-knit community of expatriates, also known as expats. Expats is a term meaning people who reside outside of their country of citizenship.

This is a very wealthy community that lavishes on each other’s misfortune, and we learn about each family and the trauma surrounding them under the surface.

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Lulu Wang said she was drawn to the story because of “the intersection of different races, different class [and] different genders.” She said the book planted so many seeds that they could continue to explore, saying “It was going to be a really fun world to live in.”

What drew ‘The Wolverine’ actor Brian Tee and ‘Ben-hur’ star Jack Huston into the project was not necessarily the content, but the director.

“I think for both of us, I’ll talk specifically for myself, I was a massive fan after I saw ‘The Farewell’, ‘The Farewell’ for me was completely cathartic. I had this incredible relationship with my grandmother who had passed, and watching that movie was literally an experience that I’ve never had before,” Tee said.

Jack Huston added his praise for Lulu Wang speaking on her brilliance as a director.

“You knew she was just going to excel. She’s brilliant,” Huston said. “So yeah, I think when I got the call to come and do it, I didn’t need to know much more than that.”

Lulu Wang is no stranger to tackling topics of identity and race. Her award-winning film ‘The Farewell’ depicts a Chinese family choosing to hide a fatal diagnosis of their matriarch to protect her final days from despair.

When asked why she chose this as her next project, Wang said she really connected with the themes depicted in the novel.

“It’s a story about women. It’s a story about family and home. It’s a story about displacement, diaspora. And so it felt like a really beautiful intersection of so many themes that I care about and so many different types of people,” Wang said.

“Expats” is available now on Amazon Prime Video, you can watch the full interviews in the video above, as well as all See It or Skip It Interviews on the show tab.

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