‘Expats’ Creator Lulu Wang Unpacks ‘Joyful’ Episode 5: ‘Those Characters Are People I Know in My Life’

The penultimate episode of Lulu Wang’s “Expats” makes a departure from the central trio of the Prime Video series, based on the book by Janice Y. K. Lee.

Up until the fifth episode, themes of loneliness, identity and status are explored through the three perspectives of Nicole Kidman’s Margaret, Ji-young Yoo’s Mercy and Sarayu Blue’s Hilary. The 90-minute Episode 5, titled “Central,” shifts the storytelling lens to Essie (Ruby Ruiz) and Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), who live with Margaret and Hilary, respectively, as their employed helpers. Puri takes a break from waiting on a struggling Hilary to visit friends and rehearse for her singing competition.

Early on in the episode, a cover of Katy Perry’s “Roar” provides a glimmer of hope in a series centered on a missing child. The optimistic song sets the tone for the episode, which Wang wanted to infuse with joy despite the weightier issues at play.

“The show does deal with some heavy issues, and particularly in five, when we’re in the non-expat perspective, you can assume it’s going to be a heavier watch, but actually there’s so much joy,” Wang told TheWrap. “It was the most joyful episode to film because people who had hardships, that’s how they get through, and Filipino culture particularly like there’s just so much food and laughter and joy and the bond between women reminds me of my own family in northern China.”

Wang said it reminded her of her breakout film “The Farewell,” which was based on her own experience as a Chinese American returning to China. “They do have a love of American pop culture, as well as local culture, but I wanted to show that that’s the reality that they’re singing these pop songs,” she continued.”

The feature-length episode, which was screened at Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and plays without commercial interruption on Prime Video, also delves deeper into the Umbrella Revolution, a political movement that took place in Hong Kong in 2014.

“Many of those characters are people that I know in my life — are my family, my friends and that is the world that I come from, of people who don’t belong and who sacrifice and are not people of privilege in Asia or otherwise,” Wang added. “It was really important to me that I make a show about expats about privilege in conjunction with the context of the rest of the society that they’re in, so not only do we explore the domestic workers that live with the expats, but also the political movement in Hong Kong 2014, which is really personal to me.”

The creator and showrunner, who directed every episode of “Expats” herself, intended to subvert the framing as a reminder to the audience that all characters have a story.

“From a story perspective, it’s that there’s these two doors into this world, and who you empathize with depends on which door you enter through first and who you frame,” Wang said. “In many of the episodes, some of these characters who are centered in [episode] five are background characters. It’s just this reminder that people who aren’t centered in the frame, we tend to forget about them until we do center them.”

Five “Expats” episodes out of six are now streaming on Prime Video.

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