Back when “Expats” showrunner and director Lulu Wang was an indie filmmaker promoting “The Farewell,” the 2019 hit that she wrote and directed, her agent reached out to her. Nicole Kidman wanted to know if Wang was interested in adapting “The Expatriates,” Janice Y.K.
Lee’s novel about three American women living in Hong Kong, into a series for Prime Video. Wang politely declined. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want to work with Nicole or that I wasn’t excited — I love the book,” Wang says, sitting on a cushioned settee in a sunlit penthouse suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Part of what gave her pause was scaling up so dramatically after the narrow purview of “The Farewell’s” 24-day shoot and shoestring $3-million budget. This would involve tackling a big-budget studio project that required shooting in both Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Then came Kidman’s make-it-happen campaign.
It began with dinner, just the two of them, at the rooftop restaurant at Soho House in West Hollywood. “What do you need?” Kidman asked her. Wang told Kidman that she wanted to make a limited series, not an ongoing one.
She wanted to work with her “Farewell” team — production designer Yong Ok Lee, cinematographer Anna Franquesa-Solano, composer Alex Weston and producing partner Dani Melia. She wanted to be in charge of casting, not saddled with name actors that a studio thought might attract a larger audience. She wanted the penultimate episode to shift th.
