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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The new limited series from Director Lulu Wang begins with a provocative question, why do we spend so much time telling the stories of victims of tragedies and forget about the people who might have caused them? That's part of the focus of Expats, which follows three women living in Hong Kong, whose lives are intertwined by a tragic event. Within the first episode, we know that an American woman named Margaret has had something horrible happen to her youngest son, Gus.

The family is in Hong Kong because her husband Clark has this great job, but each member is struggling with grief in different ways. We know that Mercy, a young Korean American woman trying to make ends meet had something to do with Gus's absence. It's torn her life apart, and we know that Margaret's friend and neighbor Hillary wants little to do with Margaret after the incident. These three women's stories are set against the backdrop of turbulent 2014 Hong Kong, a world where domestic workers catered to the wealthy in their luxury apartment buildings while locals struggle to afford life in the city.

Vogue calls the series a, "Captivating Culturally Rich Exploration of Grief and Identity." The series is based on the book by Janice Y. K. Lee and it stars Nicole Kidman as Margaret, Sarayu Blue as Hillary, and Ji-young Yoo as Mercy. It premieres on Prime this Friday. Joining me now to discuss the series is creator, writer, producer, and director of expats, Lulu Wang. Of course you know her film The Farewell. So nice to meet you in person.

Director Lulu Wang: Very nice to meet you too.

Alison Stewart: When Nicole Kidman acquired the right to this novel and approached you about directing this project, you said no at first, but once you decided you'd take it on, what questions did you have before agreeing to take it on?

Director Lulu Wang: I think the main question I had was whether or not everyone involved in the project would be on board to explore the full range of perspectives that this series required. If we would really have the freedom to explore both the circumstances, the setting of Hong Kong in 2014 as well as all of the different characters in the series.

Alison Stewart: Had you ever worked in episodic TV before?

Director Lulu Wang: I hadn't, no.

Alison Stewart: What do you know now about working in episodic? What do you know about episodic work now that you didn't know before?

Director Lulu Wang: It takes a lot longer, at least it did for us. The scope of the series was so much larger than anything I'd ever done before, but what I loved was the collaboration. I've always written alone in a room, and so to have a room of other writers who brought their own perspectives, and their own backgrounds into these characters was just really eye-opening.

Alison Stewart: When you read the book, The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee, what were you looking for when you were reading it?

Director Lulu Wang: I wasn't looking for anything because I was like, "I'm not going to do a project with Nicole. That's wild." I think that I didn't have a lot of expectations, but as I was reading it, I was just completely captivated by the nuance, the complexity of these characters, and not knowing how to feel about all of it, but it just was so deeply emotional nonetheless.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lulu Wang, we're talking about Expats. It premieres on Prime Video this Friday. As I looked, and on the credits it says, "Showrunner, writer, executive producer, director." Assuming director is that last version of you to get involved, which of those positions really starts up the project?

Director Lulu Wang: I think it's really the showrunner in television who brings the vision and brings together the writer's room. That's the genesis for all of it. The blueprint, the script that you're going to be directing from.

Alison Stewart: How long did you shoot in Hong Kong?

Director Lulu Wang: We shot for I think four or five months, but we were there for much longer just prepping and researching and location-scouting.

Alison Stewart: What was something being there that you didn't know before, but when you go, you see a place and you think, "Oh gosh, now this needs to be part of the story," maybe intellectually you didn't know it, but when you physically get someplace you understand this has to be part of this series?

Director Lulu Wang: I think just the scope of the city, the different types of people. In one of the episodes, we dive into a Sunday in Hong Kong where all of these women from all over Southeast Asia are there working as domestic workers, and they are having their day off. I was stunned by just the hundreds of thousands of women that were there, and we'd written about it. I knew about it, I had researched it, but I'd never seen that and so to actually witness it and go, "How am I going to capture this?" Then go back into the world of the Expats, which is such a bubble. They're literally on a mountaintop.

How do you go up the mountain and then down, and have a frame that's large enough to encapsulate all of these different people?

Alison Stewart: Yes, the expats live on the peak, these women, and they're playing games. They're gossiping. Some of them are sitting on cardboard. Someone's got a chair and they think, "Oh, do you think you're better than us because you've got a chair?" Just the inter dynamics between-- It is fascinating. There's a series of shots where we see a market in Hong Kong in the morning, in the afternoon, when its busiest, when it's empty, when it's most crowded. I thought that was really interesting because it's a place that the characters return to. How does this one sequence, because it happens early on, really help us understand the Hong Kong that these people live in.

Director Lulu Wang: I think that market is a character in the show because it's the place of the tragedy. It also shows that life moves on and there's a real sadness to that, because something happens and there's an emptiness that you feel like life will never be the same. Then with this almost like a time lapse you see life does go on. How do you go on within it? That's the question.

Alison Stewart: I've got a text from a former Hong Kong expat, just randomly texted in, who's listening, "As a former Hong Kong expat who lived there for two years and loves the city, I'm so glad to see the arrival of a show like Expats that can offer the world a glimpse of the incredible beauty, atmosphere, and culture of Hong Kong. It would be great if you could ask your guests how she took on Hong Kong's challenges in facing China's anti-democratic actions in the last several years. How did she incorporate this into the project?" without giving too much away.

Director Lulu Wang: That's a heavy, big question, but of course, it was in the back of my mind. None of us are who we are without the context of the time and the place that we're living in. I am somebody who is a Chinese immigrant from Beijing in 1989, and there are parallels in my life to the history of Hong Kong. That's why I chose to set it in 2014, because Hong Kong is a character in this show, and I wanted to show the resilience of Hong Kong in the same way that these women have to have resilience as well in the face of these tremendous changes.

2014 was a moment in which there was a lot of change in the horizon, but also a lot of hope still and I wanted to capture that. Of course, ultimately it's a show about the people against this backdrop. How they interact with it or how they don't, because some people are affected and others are not and they're really isolated from the events around them.

Alison Stewart: There's a moment when talking about the umbrella revolution of 2014, and one of the-- it's a minor character, but is very into being part of the protests, and his mom is like, "You're just one person. What can you do?" It's such an interesting moment because this person's so convinced that they need to be a part of it.

Director Lulu Wang: That's actually from my own life. My mom told me that she said that to my father, and she said it to me. It's not that she doesn't believe in things or the cause or the collective effort, but she's also lost people to that. This mother says what my mother said, which is that, "You are an aunt out in the world, but you are my everything. If the world loses you, it might not matter but if I lose you, that's my whole world." It leaves you to really think about that because we're all making choices that could potentially hurt the ones that we love, and what do you sacrifice? What do you choose?

Alison Stewart: My guest Lulu Wang, she is the showrunner, the writer, and the director of Expats, which premieres on Prime Video on Friday. These three women, Margaret, Hillary, and Mercy are all having very different experiences as expats. Let's start with Margaret. That's Nicole Kidman's character who there's been a tragedy in her family. When you thought about-- not that all characters need to be likable, but she's tough. She's tough and the way she treats people is really, really tough. How did you talk to Nicole about how to craft a character that we can have some sympathy for even if we don't like the way she behaves?

Director Lulu Wang: We talked a lot about the privilege of Margaret not in just wealth and being an expat and being a Westerner in Hong Kong, but also in her grief. In what ways do we take grief-- It's a selfishness, and that, "Okay, because I've been through this, I'm allowed to behave this way."

Alison Stewart: "I can break into somebody's home [laughter] because of this."

Director Lulu Wang: Yes.

Alison Stewart: That's what she attempts to do [laughs].

Director Lulu Wang: Right. I think when you're so deep in your own perspective you sometimes lose the context. That was something we talked about, but also I told Nicole not to worry so much about how she would look because it was important that she believed in the character and that she emotionally connected, which she did. It is just the experience that Margaret has is something no one should, no woman, no person, no mother. I think she just related to that, and it helps her to empathize with why the character behaves the way she does.

Alison Stewart: We know Nicole's a terrific actor, but what is it that she brings to the table behind the scenes as a producing partner?

Director Lulu Wang: When you have someone like Nicole Kidman saying, "This is the way we're doing it," that's a period at the end of that sentence. [laughter]. Whereas at that point in my career, if I said it, it was not a period, and so just having that gave me a lot of confidence and the security to know that I would have that support and that we would get the resources that we really need and the time that this story really needed.

Alison Stewart: Sarayu Blue, people know her from comedy. A lot of people know her from comedy, whether it's I Feel Bad or Mindy Kaling's series, Never Have I Ever. Hillary, her character, is not fun or she's not funny. [laughter] Maybe she's fun, so at one point in her life she was fun, but she's definitely not funny at this place in her life right now. How did you know that this actor would be right for this dramatic part?

Director Lulu Wang: It's so much easier for me casting a comedic actor for drama than the other way around because comedy, a sense of humor, sometimes that's not something you can teach. There's just something innate about it, and Sarayu is so full of life and we needed that joie de vivre. She's so elegant, she's sophisticated, and yet there are moments of funny and she's sarcastic.

Alison Stewart: She's sarcastic [laughs].

Director Lulu Wang: Yes. I don't know, I think that that range is what makes it complicated, whether you like her or you don't like her.

Alison Stewart: Ji-young Yoo is, compared to these other two actors, a relatively new person, newcomer, what made you realize that she could actually take on a scene with someone like Nicole Kidman?

Director Lulu Wang: The first auditions, Ji-young's talked about this a lot, she came in wearing all of this makeup, and I wasn't sure that she was right for the role because I thought, "She's hiding something. She's hiding behind this mask." She's so smart and she's like these Gen Z kids are like, "I know the world," total confidence, and yet there's a vulnerability behind all of that. In the last audition that we had, I asked her to remove all of her makeup, and she did it on camera. We were on a Zoom, and so they handed her some things and she wiped it from her face, and then suddenly the performance just broke through.

She was a child. You could see actually here is this very young kid who's pretending to be an adult, which Ji-young was because the role was written for-- the character of Mercy was a little bit older than she was at the time, and she wanted to make sure she presented as an older person. Then when you see that she's just a kid, and that's what Mercy is, is that she's a kid pretending to be an adult, which so many kids have to do these days with social media and all of the external influences, I knew that that vulnerability is what we needed.

Alison Stewart: Have you talked to her since about those early auditions, why she put on so much makeup?

Director Lulu Wang: Yes, because in the script, we had written Mercy to be 24, 25, and she was like 21, 22 at the time.

Alison Stewart: She thought that would do it?

Director Lulu Wang: Yes. She thought, "I'm going to present to be a little bit older." Actually, the age doesn't really matter, I just wanted her to be somebody who could be believable as who just graduated college.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Lulu Wang, the name of the show is Expats. It premieres on Prime this Friday. There is a episode, Episode 5, which is the length of a small indie film, [laughs], I think it's 95-96 minutes long. It focuses primarily on the domestic workers. All of these Expats have people who are helpers. They call them helpers in their house and they take care of the children, and they do the wash, and they do the cooking, and they're just available to them almost 24/7. As you said on their days off, we get to see them on their days off. We get to hear them sing the pop songs that they like to hear.

We get to learn about their dreams. Why did you feel like Episode 5 was the right place to drop this in-depth visitation with these people?

Director Lulu Wang: It was a very early idea. From the minute that I started thinking about adapting, I thought, "Okay, it's going to be six episodes and there has to be a penultimate fifth episode, and it's going to flip the perspective. It's going to undercut the expectations." My idea for it was actually that some people would see it first, that it would be a standalone. We've been premiering that at festivals, it premiered last night, and they would get to walk through this particular side door as opposed to the main door of the Expats. The majority of audiences will watch it in order, 1 through 6.

When you watch it in order, what happens is you form this bubble, you're in the world of the Expats, and then it's a flip of perspective. If you enter through five first, you enter through Essie, through Puri, through these locals, you're going to have a different lens when you're watching one through four. You're going to see things in the background and go, "Oh, why aren't we focusing on that person? I know so much about them, but they're doing this or they're not doing that." I've had people go back and watch it with that realization and pick up new things.

Alison Stewart: This is definitely a series you could watch two times and see two different things. Definitely caught that already. I thought this was interesting, you're a trained pianist. Did you play music for the series?

Director Lulu Wang: I did. Yes.

Alison Stewart: That's so exciting. How did that come about?

Director Lulu Wang: I work with Alex Weston on the Farewell and now on Expats. We just always said, "Oh, well, why don't I play one of the cues and why don't I play this?" I don't know. Sometimes it's just so personal to me. There's a particular cue that feels really special. I guess I really enjoy being part of the process, I love recording the music, I love coming up with the themes and it was my first love.

Alison Stewart: When you think about privilege, and that plays a big role in this series, what were some of the tropes you wanted to avoid about the way we think about privilege? What were some of the aspects of privilege you wanted to tease out that maybe don't get talked about that are the quiet part, get said out loud in this show? [laughter].

Director Lulu Wang: I guess I was just conscious to not be celebrating wealth and privilege, because oftentimes when you're in that world, it's a fine line because on one hand, you can say that you're critiquing it, but if there's a lot of joy and you're really celebrating it, then people look at it as aspirational as well. Not that it can't be, but I think I just wanted to avoid that kind of overt celebration and overt obnoxiousness. I think that oftentimes things are a lot more nuanced and the microaggressions that happen, they're not direct, the power dynamics that happen, and that's what I wanted to explore were these well-intentioned people.

Everyone's "well-intentioned" and Margaret calling Essie her family or Sarayu's character Hillary saying to Puri, "Almost like we have this bond because we're both brown, we're both from other places. We're not from Hong Kong, and it is a place with a lot of colorism." They connect over makeup and, "Oh, and we're friends," but are they really because there's still this class divide? I just wanted to look at the intersection of all of these different identities.

Alison Stewart: There's also a real emphasis on family and the way people have different opinions about family. Having a family gives, on one end, someone almost moral superiority. What were some of the issues around family that you hope this show investigates?

Director Lulu Wang: I think that it's so much about the family that we build and we find not just the biological. Particularly when you're not in the place that you were born, and that's certainly been my experience, that you seek out your family and yet there are sometimes differences of your backgrounds that perhaps you'll never understand. Perhaps you go, "Oh, am I code-switching in these moments for this person and that person," and you're always striving for a deeper vulnerability and intimacy. You hope that everyone in your family understands you and you are "equal," but I think I just wanted to show it's really a question, are they family or they're not? Some people watch Margaret calling Essie her family and say, "Oh, that's so sweet that she's raised her kids. She's indebted to her forever. Of course, she's family," but then other people laugh because they know that's not really true. That's something that makes Margaret feel good to say that, but not for Essie.

Alison Stewart: Expats premieres on Prime Video this Friday. I've been speaking with its writer, director, and one of its executive producers, Lulu Wang. Lulu, thank you for being with us.

Director Lulu Wang: Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time

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