{"id":624564,"date":"2024-06-17T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/expats-creator-lulu-wang-on-giving-background-players-main-character-energy\/"},"modified":"2024-06-17T23:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T20:30:00","slug":"expats-creator-lulu-wang-on-giving-background-players-main-character-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/expats-creator-lulu-wang-on-giving-background-players-main-character-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u2018Expats\u2019 Creator Lulu Wang on Giving Background Players Main Character Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n When Lulu Wang read Janice Y.K. Lee\u2019s best-selling novel The Expatriates<\/em>, she immedia<\/a>tely knew she wanted to explore the periphery of the titular characters\u2019 \u201cbubble\u201d in her limited series<\/a> adaptation for Prime Video: \u201cWe had to step outside and see them through other lenses in order to understand the context.\u201d With the blessing of Lee (who was in her writers room) and star\/executive producer Nicole Kidman, Wang departs from the main narrative \u2014 which depicts an expat community in turmoil after one of their children goes missing \u2014 in Expats<\/em>\u2018 penultimate installment. \u201cGrief can often be very selfish and isolating,\u201d she explains. \u201cI wanted the audience to experience all those things before going, \u2018Wait, there\u2019s so much more out there.\u2019 \u201d The episode\u2019s opening sequence establishes that purpose right away.<\/p>\n

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\n \u201cIt was important to be out in the city, to throw you into an [unfamiliar] environment, to be in the elements, because the rain was a character,\u201d says Wang, who used a slow zoom in from a bird\u2019s-eye view of the city to, finally, a familiar face \u2014 domestic worker Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), who heretofore has only app<\/a>eared as a background player in the lives of her expat employers, Hilary and David Starr (Sarayu Blue and Jack Huston). \u201c[The zoom] gives you the time to [realize] this is the main character now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n In order to find someone who could pull off this description, Wang decided to focus on vocal chops rather than acting experience. \u201cAmelyn came in as a singer who had never acted before,\u201d Wang says of the Hong Kong-based artist, who helped select the song that Puri sings in this scene. The director wanted a fun pop number to emphasize the episode\u2019s tonal departure from the rest of the series, and they ultimately landed on Katy Perry\u2019s \u201cRoar,\u201d which as a summer 2013 release was also historically accurate to what would have ruled the international pop charts in 2014.<\/p>\n

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\n Anyone who has visited Hong Kong has likely witnessed the weekly outdoor gatherings of the city\u2019s foreign domestic underclass, called \u201chelpers\u201d in local parlance. Lee explained to Wang and the rest of the crew that even when it\u2019s raining, these live-in helpers prefer to be outside the home on Sunday. Mostly hailing from the Philippines, many stay with their employers for years, raising their families as they send money to their own back home. \u201cIt\u2019s such a huge part of the fabric of Hong Kong,\u201d Wang says.<\/p>\n

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\n Although domestic helpers are prohibited by law from taking on additional work outside of their employers\u2019 homes \u2014 a policy Wang calls \u201cindentured servitude\u201d \u2014 some spend their days off secretly working side jobs, as Essie (Ruby Ruiz), the helper of Margaret\u2019s (Nicole Kidman) family, is revealed to be doing. \u201cWhile Puri is enjoying her day off and she has hobbies and friends, Essie\u2019s main purpose is to send money back to her family, so she has this other gig,\u201d Wang says. \u201cShe\u2019s got her secrets. Even though Margaret calls her family, there\u2019s so much she doesn\u2019t know about her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Hong Kong in 2014, in global headlines and the lives of locals, was defined by the burgeoning pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, making its entrance in the series here as literal background noise for the main characters. \u201cWho has the privilege to not be political?\u201d says Wang of the expats\u2019 ability to ignore the battle over civil liberties, adding that she set the series at the dawn of the movement, which ultimately failed in the China-controlled Legislative Council, \u201cbecause it was the precipice of change.\u201d Adds the showrunner, \u201cI thought it was more emotional, knowing what we know now, to look at 2014 when there was still so much hope. It felt like a parallel to all these [main] characters\u2019 stories. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen, and yet you still have to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n This story first appeared in a June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Lulu Wang read Janice Y.K. Lee\u2019s best-selling novel The Expatriates, she immediately knew she wanted to explore the periphery of the titular characters\u2019 \u201cbubble\u201d in her limited series adaptation for Prime Video: \u201cWe had to step outside and see them through other lenses in order to understand the context.\u201d With the blessing of Lee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":624565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/18A-scripttoscene-expats-H-2024.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[110189,150474,91401,140186],"class_list":["post-624564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-expats","tag-limited-series","tag-lulu-wang","tag-script-to-scene"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}