Why Lulu Wang Wasn’t Sure About 'Expats' — And What Made Her Say Yes

The writer-director of “The Farewell” talks about the care and responsibility she felt in making “Expats,” her new TV series set in Hong Kong.

Lulu Wang wasn’t sure if “Expats” was going to be the right move after the success of her 2019 film, “The Farewell.” After making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and A24 picking it up, “The Farewell” became one of the most acclaimed films of that year. The movie was a deeply personal story that Wang fought hard to get made, resisting pressure from Hollywood executives to cater it to the white gaze.

“That film took off in a way that I didn’t expect at all. I did the opposite of what people said I should do, for the most part. Like, in order to appeal to a broader audience, make it more in English, cast a white person — all of these things that I rejected, to make something really personal to me,” Wang said in an interview last week, almost exactly five years since “The Farewell” premiered at Sundance. “And so, it was just shocking. But I also heard [those choices] validated and I wanted to be back in a creative space where I could take risks and make those choices again.”

During that whirlwind year, Nicole Kidman — who had optioned novelist Janice Y.K. Lee’s “The Expatriates” to develop it into a series for Amazon — approached Wang to see if she was interested in the adaptation. But Wang wondered if it might be the opposite of what she wanted to do next as a writer and director.

“I didn’t think that was going to be a space where I would have freedom to really stay small and make something against the grain and continue to look for my own voice,” she said. “And I told [Kidman] that. I said, ‘You’re a huge star. This is Amazon doing a whole series, and it’s Hong Kong. This is a nuanced, complex place.’”

To her surprise, Kidman assured her she would have complete creative freedom, and Wang realized the scale of the project could be an asset.