Writer/director/showrunner Lulu Wang first came to prominence for her sophomore film The Farewell (2019), which gained her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Film. Farewell was largely based on Wang’s own Chinese-American immigrant experience, as her autobiographical proxy Billi (Awkwafina) returns to China to say goodbye to her terminally ill grandmother, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuh-zhen). Billi’s family keeps the diagnosis a secret from the matriarch, as they gather under the ruse of a cousin’s wedding. Billi struggles to understand the Chinese custom, which touches on a thematic current of Western individualism versus familial/Eastern collectivism, but the film ends six years after the planned farewell, revealing a healthy Nai Nai still unaware of her diagnosis. In Wang’s Independent Spirit Best Film acceptance speech, she encouraged industry leaders to support and take chances on women filmmakers. As will be shown, the emphasis on collectivism and camaraderie with other women and below the line workers in film becomes central to Wang’s working style as a showrunner. Since the initial success of Farewell, Wang has been slow and deliberate in her future projects. Meanwhile, glimpses of her fairly quiet personal life can be gleaned from her Instagram account posts and stories (thumbelulu), which include her partnership, and subsequent 2024 wedding, to fellow filmmaker Barry Jenkins [(Moonlight, 2016); (Underground Railroad, 2017, Amazon); (If Beale Street Could Talk, 2018); (Mufasa, 2024)]. Both Wang and Jenkins share a slower paced intentionality in their work process, and also an interest in exploring the potential of televisual storytelling of literary adaptations. Wang’s filmic follow up is still in development, while she later pursued producing and television. This piece will argue that rather than promote her status as singular auteur of her TV project as a showrunner, Expats (2023-2024, Amazon), Wang employed Instagram to reveal the series’ collaborative authorship. This visibility subsequently reveals the complex production realities of a project that also emphasized undervalued labor.  As an adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s Expatriates, the series also speaks to the layered authorship scholars like Shelley Cobb discuss as a conversation and interplay between the various authors involved in the work. Indeed, Lee is also credited as a producer and writer of the series. This collaboration thus reflects the goals of feminist filmmakers who often deflect from solely accepting a singular genius auteur status, and instead revel in collaboration.

Expats is a sprawling, transnational, and multi-perspective work, with recuring thematic concerns carried from Farewell. The series seemingly focuses on the titular 1% Western of expatriates who inhabit Hong Kong’s most affluent spaces. On the surface, Expats can be viewed as yet another Nicole Kidman/Blossom Films star vehicle, in which a wealthy white middle aged woman encounters a crisis rooted in familial obligation and personal desire (see: television series Big Little Lies (2017-2020, HBO), The Perfect Couple (2024, Netflix), The Undoing (2020, HBO) and Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu) and the 2024 films A Family Affair and Babygirl). However, the Expats skillfully interweaves the conflicts of several of its characters, including the outliers of the financially unstable Korean-American nanny and the women who work as “helpers” for the expatriates, as highlighted by the standalone, feature length episode “Central.” Set amidst the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests and a new storyline of student protesters, “Central” further reveals Expats is also a series about the fluctuating push-pull of power and identity that is inextricably linked to Hong Kong, a region constantly grappling with individual assertion between Western and Eastern control. In her second pinned post on Instagram, released in February 2024, Wang cites the episode specifically as a “big part of why I wanted to make the series,” accompanied by stills highlighting the tertiary characters who are at the forefront in “Central” (Figures 1 and 2).

If Wang’s Farewell functions as a singular and autobiographical/auteur driven work, Expats is not only reflective of the sprawling capabilities of serial television in the global streaming era, but of collaborative and multi-layered authorship. For example, unsurprisingly,  Expats is also clearly influenced by the work of Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, whose work largely deals with his character’s and the region’s interlocking identity crises. In her two saved stories collections of “HK!” and “HK again!,” from 2021 and 2022, respectively, Wang emphasizes the collaborative pre-production and production process of Expats, and a sense of camaraderie and conviviality amidst Covid quarantines and extremely warm weather conditions. Throughout the two saved Instagram story collections of Hong Kong, Wang and her team are shown working and socializing frequently with famed Wong cinematographer and collaborator, Christopher Doyle (Figures 3 and 4). Wang is not denouncing her cinephilia or her own individual vision, but also embraces the collectivism of the medium and its potential. She highlights the work of below the line labor and teamwork as integral to Expats.

At the core of Wang’s series-related stories and posts are Expats collaborators, most notably cinematographer Anna Franquesa-Solano, and production designer Yong Ok Lee, indicating a trifecta of collaboration and camaraderie (Figure 5, 6, and 7). From also highlighting stories with production assistants, assistant directors, and line producers, Wang appears to intentionally eschew any inclusion of the visible actor-stars of the series (Figures 8, 9, and 10). 

Much like the “Central” episode on helpers and domestic labor, traditionally below the line workers are highlighted over their above the line counterparts. In her first saved story from the “HK again!” collection, Wang shares a screenshot of a July 2022 Twitter post that three years after the success of Farewell, she started a production company with producing partner Dani Melia and is able to have complete creative control on Expats (Figure 11). Although she also highlights some interviews on her personal affinity with the project, connecting it to the themes of Farewell such as being an outsider/interloper, and mention of Kidman’s stardom, Wang is  ultimately keen on showcasing the collaborative nature of the sprawling, expansive world of Expats and media authorship at large. Perceptions of singular authorship are largely constructed in the reception of a project, and Wang dispels these notions through her own steering of the series’ public understanding of how a production works.

Beyond the behind the scenes saved stories collection, the more official promotional material posts on her Instagram “main feed” also emphasizes and highlights her collaborators. In a post from June 2024, Wang further highlights the artistry of Expats costume designer Malgosia Turkanska, citing her “love for these characters, for the plight of Hong Kong and its people, her synergetic collaboration with Anna and Yong...” (Figure 12). Here Anna is the aforementioned cinematographer Anna Franquesa-Solano, and Yong is production designer Yong Ok Lee. In another post from the same month, she “embarasses” Ok Lee by praising her ability to “manage both macro and micro,” noting her ability to source hundreds of umbrellas and build 200 ft buildings, while sharing a text message thread about a crucial need for “cups” that appears to be an inside joke between the three (Figure 13).   The use of the term synergetic collaboration is vital for how Wang works with and presents her team.  A further detailed analysis of Wang’s social media posts and authorship is in also development, as the nature of IMR posts are shorter by design.

Lulu Wang’s creative approach as the Expats showrunner proves art in collaboration is intrinsic, joyful, and well-spent. To take a note from Wang’s ethos, film and media scholarship can also provide more perspective and potential when co-authoring and co-editing are considered viable and worthy, particularly in an increasingly neoliberal academia. Wang and Expats suggests that we are not only not alone in our creative labor, but that we also simply don’t have to be.