The 2019 film The Farewell — a poignant but liberating tale of a family getting together to bid adieu to their dying matriarch — put Lulu Wang in the spotlight. Now, the Chinese-born American filmmaker has directed Expats, whose first two episodes were released on Prime Video on January 26.

It was actress Nicole Kidman who had the rights to the Janice Y.K. Lee novel Expatriates, on which Expats is based, who brought the book to Wang. “I hadn’t read the book before, but I read it immediately when Nicole Kidman brought me the book,” Wang told t2 over a late-night video call.

“My reaction was first that I was incredibly honoured, but it was also very intimidating. I didn’t know if I could handle something of this scope and size at that time because it is a book that covers so much and has so many characters,” said the 40-year-old filmmaker.

It was the challenge of handling such a wide canvas that also had Wang intrigued and excited. “I was incredibly moved by what I read. The story draws one’s empathy in so many different directions,” smiled Wang.

The demands of being on set for hours at a stretch also posed a challenge for the director in what was her maiden tryst with the web series format. “Directing all six episodes was incredibly challenging. But it also made me a much stronger director and collaborator... having to show up day after day for over 100 days and constantly making the most of it. That was one of the things that I was also very proud of,” she told us.

Having migrated to the US from China when she was six, did the story of Expats feel personal to Wang in any way? “I was very personally connected to this questioning, this definition of what is an expat. In America, I am not an expat, I am an immigrant from China. But I am also American. So when I travel abroad, whether I am in Asia or somewhere else, I believe that I am an American expat. That is what my passport says. And also because I am there temporarily, working or for other reasons. So I wanted to challenge what people think of as an expat and ask us all to consider these different definitions of people who migrate and our diaspora.”

Priyanka Roy