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Warning: This post contains spoilers for Expats
Lulu Wang first read The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee while she was on the press tour for her acclaimed 2019 film The Farewell. Traveling through Sydney and meeting a stream of people from the global Asian diaspora, she connected with the 2016 novel, which centers on three American expats living in Hong Kong.
“I thought it was incredibly evocative and rich, because of all of these different characters with different backgrounds intersecting in this one place in khbrknews,” Wang says. “It felt like a microcosm of the whole world.”
Wang has adapted the book into a close cousin: A quietly thrilling six-episode drama titled Expats about privilege, class, loss, and grief that premiered on Prime Video in January. The series opens in the aftermath of tragedy. Something terrible has happened that touches the lives of each of the titular expats—Margaret (Nicole Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo)—and the unfolding story shows us how they handle it.
The penultimate episode of Expats, titled “Central” after Hong Kong’s government complex and business district, captures the crux of the story. Wang both wrote and directed “Central,” which punctures the expats’ bubble, illustrating the ways in which their choices spill over and affect others—including those closest to them and those they’ll never know.
Wang originally turned the project down after Kidman, whose Blossom Films produced the show, sent her The Expatriates to read. She wasn’t sure that she’d have the creative freedom to explore all of the complexities and contexts that intrigued her about the book.
“I wanted to be able to depict that wealth and privilege, but also be able to contextualize it and make sure that we weren’t celebrating it,” she says. “Because that’s the question that I’m always asking, is:…
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