The Partnership: How Nicole Kidman Convinced A Hesitant Lulu Wang To Take The Helm In Prime Video’s ‘Expats’
deadline.comLulu Wang remembers Nicole Kidman spiraling down a psychological rabbit hole in Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 dream-like masterpiece Birth where a woman believes that a 10-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband. “That’s my favorite,” Wang declares, much to Kidman’s delight — and surprise.
During the making of Prime Video’s Expats drama series, based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s second novel, The Expatriates published in early 2016, they both discovered that they had the same ‘get up and do it’ sensibility.
As Kidman put it: “You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and do it.” Followed by a cry of “Don’t just sit there, let’s do it, let’s do it.” Wang says it’s “super rare” to meet someone like Kidman. “It feels pretty rare because there are a lot of people who talk about meeting more female directors.
But I think that the evidence is in the resume. You can talk about it all you want and shout about it, particularly if you are somebody who has a particular status in Hollywood where your name green lights projects, and you are not using your name to green light projects with women at the helm.
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