Introducing 'Breaking Through': An Ankler Video Series About Star Performances
'Expats' creator-writer-director Lulu Wang and actor Ji-young Yoo reveal their a-ha moments of creativity
The Ankler is excited to announce Breaking Through, a new video series highlighting the hard-earned wins and unexpected turns that transform an artist’s confidence, creative scope and career. First up: Lulu Wang, the creator, writer and director of Prime Video’s Expats, and actor Ji-young Yoo.
The next episode of Breaking Through, coming soon, will feature Aaron Moten from Fallout.
The Prime Video series Expats follows three American women in Hong Kong, circa 2014, as they deal with the fallout from a family tragedy.
Lulu Wang, the acclaimed filmmaker behind 2019’s The Farewell, experienced her biggest Expats breakthrough during a trip to Hong Kong, early in production, as she realized how a strong sense of place would drive her storytelling. She was thrilled by “the opportunity to really show what this place is,” she says.
Ji-young Yoo’s first turning point on set was personal, when costar Nicole Kidman “took me aside and said to stand in my power and stand up for myself,” she says. As an actor, Yoo was ultimately challenged to “access a really big well of emotion” for the limited series’ final episode, as she recalls. The scene is “pivotal” for Yoo’s character, Mercy, and for the show, Wang adds. “If that scene doesn’t work,” she says, “then the whole character of Mercy doesn’t work.”
Watch Wang and Yoo’s conversation about what worked on Expats and how they supported each other’s breakthroughs to tell its moving and unsettling story. “Sometimes, this word ‘breakthrough’ can feel like, ‘happily ever after, the end!’” says Wang. “And it's really just a beginning.”