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The Gotham Pages: Lulu Wang on Creating Storytelling Ecosystems Abroad
Expats Writer/Director Lulu Wang has been shooting film and TV overseas since her debut feature Posthumous (2014). The American-German co-production tells the story of a Berlin-based artist who finally finds his audience when the media mistakenly reports him dead. Wang then shot her sophomore hit, The Farewell (2019), between New York and Changchun. The themes and plot of that film—in which the obstinate individualism of a Chinese-American writer (Awkwafina) abrades her family’s collective sense of responsibility when she reunites with them in northern China—is reflected in the film’s co-production model, for which an American and Chinese cast and crew converged.
These international shoots, coupled with Wang’s experience as a producer—who has started production companies like Flyingbox Pictures, Legal Reel Productions, and now Local Time, featuring a first-look TV deal with Amazon—prepared her to show run and direct all 6 episodes of Expats, a sprawling series about a solipsistic ensemble of rich Hong Kong expats who begin to toxically intermingle after a tragedy plunges them into each other’s prickly webs. With its wider production scope, the series also sees Wang expand her explorations of cultural difference into attendant class contradictions.
Many diasporic filmmakers aspire to shoot where they or their families originate from, but few rise so quickly, let alone ever reach, the level of Wang’s power to consistently make feature films and TV abroad. In our conversation, I inquire about the practical moves that led her to such a rare position in the industry; as well as Wang’s insistence on story, and not compromising your vision in the process of producing it; and maintaining collaborators to sustain a sense of continuity across projects and locations.
A.E. Hunt: From the beginning, you’ve started your own production companies. Is remaining directly involved in that ecosystem a way for you to maintain creative agency as you take on larger projects?
Lulu Wang: I think so. Writers and directors have to be entrepreneurs by nature because no one’s handing you a path to walk down. With every project you are starting an enterprise: you have to decide who’s going to be part of it and how you’re going to protect it. As I make more films, I like the idea of not starting from scratch every time. There’s a snowball effect where one project can roll into another with the people that you’ve worked with before. For me it’s really about maintaining a sense of family, because writing and directing is incredibly lonely. That community is grounding and helps to maintain continuity as you go from project to project.
AH: Your debut feature, Posthumous, was an American-German co-production and your sophomore feature, The Farewell, was a co-production between the US and China. Then you shot Expats in Hong Kong. You’re in a pretty rare position as an American director to produce films and series abroad. Was it challenging to make your debut feature an international co-production?
LW: Not in the ways that you would think. It was a challenge just because it’s a bigger project than I probably should have started with. I mean, there’s no should or shouldn’t—it is what it is; but it definitely put me in the shoes of producing first and foremost. Because I didn’t go to film school and because it was this international production, I had to really put on my producing hat.
Independent directors are all producers on some level; we’re always producing. But for those early films it’s really important to be able to take creative risks and have that protection around you—where you’re not the person driving the vehicle from a practical standpoint. Co-productions actually feel really natural to me, though, because I’ve grown up navigating cultural differences and language differences—which [is a theme of The Farewell] itself—and being an outsider no matter where I am.
AH: A lot of diasporic filmmakers aspire to make work abroad. But it’s difficult to get to a place in your career where you can do that. Do you have tips for how to get there?
LW: Don’t start with the producer’s hat first, because it’s almost like trying to build the bones of the house before you know what kind of home you want. And I think it’s more important to figure out how you want the home to feel. What is the story about? Who are the people you want to live with? That’s really important because [story ideas] were always thrust upon me when I was trying to make The Farewell.
I had a very specific story to tell but every time I would pitch it to a producer they would go, “Who’s the market? Because if it’s this market then you have to change it in this direction. And if it’s for that market you have to change it in that direction.” I don’t know about the marketplace, but it’s neither A nor B direction; it’s somewhere in the middle, and I understand that that doesn’t exist right now – there aren’t a lot of great comps that I can use—but that’s actually the essence of the entire story: being in between. I really believe that if you have a great story and you wait and for the people who see it, they’ll find a way; they’ll find a way to connect what works in both places, whether it be casting or tax subsidies. There’re all of these practicalities and ways to create a formula, a recipe that works. That’s where a creative producer is really valuable.
Emerging filmmakers, there are so many labs that can connect you with mentors who have creative [production] ideas that won’t change the fundamental essence of the story that you’re trying to tell.
AH: How did you arrive at the right formula for The Farewell?
LW: I think it’s just about choices, like maybe there’s a larger broader comedy version of The Farewell to be made at a bigger studio. But maybe in order to maintain what you’re trying to do you have to go smaller, more nimble. Filmmaking is all about compromises, but which compromises are you gonna make? Are you gonna find a cheaper location that could work just as well or potentially better? Are you gonna change the race of the cast or the language of the story? Where you draw the line is very personal to each filmmaker.
Who’s to say, if I said yes [to a compromise], if the film would still even get made? I did a podcast about the true story of The Farewell, and I didn’t know the podcast would turn into an opportunity to make the film. But I knew the podcast gave me an opportunity to tell the story in a way that I believed in. It needed to be told, and I could test it that way with lower risk and no budget. You want to give yourself the opportunity to bring the purest form of your vision to the early stages. That’s why people make short films, right? Because it’s a lower cost way of really solidifying your vision so people understand exactly what you’re trying to do. Then you can partner a short film with the feature-length script or a really extensive pitch deck. Some people draw it as a graphic novel.
AH: Are there any specific experiences from Posthumous or The Farewell that prepared you to shoot in Hong Kong for Expats—and were there things you experienced on the shoot of Expats that those prior films could not have prepared you for?
LW: You prepare for frustrations due to the assumption that people work differently and you have to figure out how to navigate communication among teams because we always hire local crew. Who are the key members and department heads like the gaffer and key grip, who have to be bilingual because they’re also translators [for the rest of the crew]. We didn’t have that issue in Hong Kong, but we had that issue in Changchun [for The Farewell].
You have to break down what the communication lines are within each department, from department heads to me, to the producers,etc. Where can we be strategic about placing bilingual speakers? Sometimes my department heads don’t speak the local language, so you have to create a different system of communication.
AH: How did you approach casting the Filipino actors who play overseas domestic workers in the feature length episode, Central?
LW: My casting director in Hong Kong reached out to a casting director in Manila and there was a wider search. We cast Ruby Ruiz [as Essie] from Manila. She had sent in the tape and the second I saw her, I knew… We talked via Zoom and she said that she had been a nanny in Canada when she was younger, so this experience really spoke to her. We wanted to cast locally, because financially that would have been more cost-efficient, but we also wanted to support the local people economically. Originally, I wanted to cast real domestic workers, but we quickly realized that would be impossible. They have very strict visas that only allow them to do the job they came to the country to do. So that was really frustrating, because that kind of system that these women have to go through is exactly what we’re interrogating [in that episode]. The family that hires them brings them over and has their visa; it’s basically a kind of ownership, because they hold on to their ability to be there.
So we needed people who were there on other visas that allowed them to do other jobs. But many of the women we cast had previously been domestic workers who were somehow able to shift their visa. So it was a mixture. Amellyn Pardenilla [Puri, a caretaker who witnesses her employers’ affairs and scandals] is a singer in Hong Kong. They didn’t necessarily need to have acting experience, so the casting director Rosanna Ng reached out to the Hong Kong music community, where there are a lot of incredible Filipino musicians.
We came across Amellyn and her husband, who’s a music producer. Her husband was also incredibly helpful in recording—we had done a lot of rehearsals with the choir for that scene and pre-recording the music and things like that; and Amellyn’s incredible in it, you would never guess she’s never acted.
AH: How does the production length of a series affect that international ecosystem?
LW: We had crew from all over the world. We had crew from Australia, because Nicole Kidman recommended her First AD, Simon Warnock. And there is like this link between Hong Kong and Australia, so there are a lot of Australians in Hong Kong. We had a mostly local crew. You really are a big family, especially at the length we were working together.
Nicole, who’s also the EP, really empowered me to execute this show in my vision and gave the studio the confidence to let me choose a team that I really trust, even if they didn’t have the kind of experience that one might [typically] look for. I empower my department heads to do the same: If there’s somebody you love and trust, then let me fight to make sure you get that person, because sometimes that history and that shorthand is more valuable than a resume.
Maybe sometimes you do need somebody who has the resume and can lead you in ways you never thought about. That might be uncomfortable, because you don’t know that person. I work with a lot of women. There’s always the fear of hiring someone who is condescending to us. Or if they’re working under me, there’s the fear that they don’t want to respect me or listen to me because I’m a woman. Once that kind of dynamic is present, it’s really hard to keep going. I’ve had those experiences, so I know it’s a risk to work with somebody new.
I try to find that balance of growing with new people but also fighting for older relationships where it’s important. Then, ten years later, when you’re a filmmaker and making a studio film, you’ll look around and see all these people you’ve known for a really long time, and that’s a really good feeling. I don’t think climbing up alone is the way to go.
