THE OUTSIDERS

EXPATS Lulu Wang follows up The Farewell with a thorny drama about Americans abroad.

Margaret (Nicole Kidman) and Clarke (Brian Tee) are rocked by the disappearance of their son

‘We would be shut down, because you can’t shoot an actual typhoon’

LULU WANG

If we told you that Expats is, in part, a show about a missing boy, you’re probably picturing the resolution already – a tense rescue, tearful reunion and the promise of a brighter future. Without busting open the spoiler seal, Expats isn’t that show.

‘It’s not what audiences might expect, or be used to,’ says Lulu Wang, director of 2019’s The Farewell and all six episodes of this limited series. ‘This show is a meditation. It’s so many other things that are not “what happens next?” In life, we don’t often get closure.’

It was the show’s star, Nicole Kidman, who brought Expats to Wang, after optioning Janice Y.K. Lee’s source novel. Kidman plays Margaret, the mother whose son has recently gone missing. The young woman responsible for the boy at the time of his disappearance, Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), is haunted by that night. And then there’s Hilary (Sarayu Blue), an estranged friend of Margaret’s, whose marriage to David (Jack Huston) is hanging on by a thread.

All three women are expats living in Hong Kong, and enjoy the privileges that come with wealth or connections to the West, in contrast to the migrant workers who serve as live-in help to Margaret and Hilary’s families. This key, largely semantic, distinction was one Wang was keen to explore.

‘I grew up in America as a Chinese immigrant,’ Wang says. ‘Now, when I go back to Hong Kong, I’m very sheltered. I recognise that I’m an expat now. So which one am I? It’s important to look at why we have these different terms, and what are the connotations that come with what you’re labelled as.’ This idea becomes central to the standout, feature-length fifth episode (called Central, funnily enough), which puts the migrant-worker community in the spotlight. ‘It was the first thing I pitched when I was taking on the series,’ says Wang, who also has a solo writing credit on the episode. ‘It gives us a bit of a break from the expat world, and [shows] the context outside of it.’

In the episode, a typhoon hits Hong Kong, and ‘who’s sheltered from those elements, and who’s not’ becomes a physical manifestation of the show’s themes. Rain and wind machines were used to create the wild weather event, which was shot on location in Hong Kong. Though, ironically, shooting paused more than once due to real extreme weather. ‘Sometimes we did get a typhoon,’ Wang recalls. ‘And we would be shut down, because you can’t shoot an actual typhoon!’

If all that sounds heavy going, fear not. Much like The Farewell, joy sits cathartically alongside sadness in Expats. ‘I wanted it to be hopeful,’ says Wang. ‘And to ultimately leave people with a sense of strength and their own resilience.’

EXPATS STREAMS ON PRIME VIDEO FROM 26 JANUARY 2024.