Filmmaker Lulu Wang Creates In Between Two Worlds

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Following the success of her autobiographical 2019 film, The Farewell, Lulu Wang has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in Hollywood.

With the arrival of her new series Expats, she joins us to discuss the responsibility she felt creating the Hong Kong-based show (6:55), collaborating with actor Nicole Kidman (12:30), and Wang’s personal connection to the project (13:12). Then, we unpack the contrasting perspectives embedded in the story (19:44), what she witnessed growing up in Miami, as an expat herself (22:55), and how she processes her family history today (24:15).

On the back-half, Lulu reflects on her college years (34:45) where she began to find her creative voice (36:46), the road to her debut feature film Posthumous (45:32), and why she wanted to tell a more personal story in The Farewell (50:30), which she first narrated on This American Life (51:25). To close, we talk about her full-circle moment creating Expats (1:04:00) and the importance of community (1:06:30).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Sam. If you enjoy our interviews with writers and artists on Talk Easy,
0:04.7	then I'd recommend checking out the podcast, Missing Pages. Hosted by acclaimed literary critic and author Beth Ann
0:11.6	Patrick, Missing Pages investigates the biggest hot button topics in the book
0:16.2	world today with the help of special guests like New York Times Best Selling Author
0:21.2	Jody Pekle and publisher weeklies Jim Miliet.
0:24.8	Produced by the People at the Podgolomerate,
0:27.0	Missing Pages explores everything from the Insta Frame of Colleen Hoover
0:31.2	to the rise of book bands across America to the lucrative culture of non-fiction
0:36.3	ghost writing. As both the Washington Post and The Guardian praise, missing pages is a must listen. So if you'd like to check it out you can follow
0:44.8	missing pages on Apple Podcast or wherever you like to listen. Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Frig and director Lulu Wang. Lulu broke out in 2019 with the release of her
1:38.4	autobiographical film The Farewell. It's set around a Chinese family that discovers that their grandmother has
1:45.4	stage four cancer. And instead of delivering that bad news to her, they decide to throw a fake
1:52.1	wedding so that the whole family can, in essence, say goodbye.
1:57.1	This actually happened in Wong's family, and when the Farewell came out in the summer of 2019, it was kind of a runaway hit.
2:05.0	I remember in the moment it felt like a benediction for Wong, who had made one film prior and
2:11.2	was struggling for years and years to get this passion project off the ground.
2:17.0	Then shortly after that, as you all know, 2020 happened.
2:22.0	The pandemic halted or worse derailed the careers of many fledgling filmmakers and
2:27.5	yet Wong kept busy in quarantine, eventually finding her next project in the pages of Janice YK Lee's New York Times bestseller,
2:37.0	The Ex-Patriots.
2:38.0	The adaptation, shortened to expats, is set in 2014 Hong Kong and is centered around three American women,
2:46.4	Margaret, Mercy and Hillary, whose lives intersect after a sudden family tragedy.
	...

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