Nicole Kidman’s New ‘Expats’ Series Shows HongKongers Holding Umbrellas

Nicole Kidman with Keith Urban on Jan. 10, 2020. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

“Expats,” a new TV series starring Academy Award-winning Australian actress Nicole Kidman, will premiere soon. Its official trailer has been released, featuring a number of Hong Kong street scenes, including crowds holding umbrellas, a gathering of foreign domestic helpers, and Mido Cafe tea restaurant at Yau Ma Tei.

The trailer opens with Nicole alone at the beach, saying, “I just sometimes want to be alone, where I’m not somebody’s wife, not somebody’s mother, where I’m not defined by tragedy.” A scene of her taking a bath in a tenement building and a close-up of Hong Kong artiste Bonde Sham Lok Yi holding an umbrella in the rain also appeared in the trailer.

In 2014, tens of thousands of Hongkongers took to the streets, holding umbrellas as a tool to protest the Hong Kong police’s use of violence to disperse crowds of students demanding more transparent elections, which was triggered by Beijing’s further erosion of the former British colony’s self-governance. The movement was later named “Umbrella Revolution,” referencing the umbrellas used for defense against the police’s pepper spray, and quickly gained widespread acceptance.

Adapted from the 2016 novel The Expatriates written by Janice Y. K. Lee, the story is set in 2014. It follows three American women who have moved to Hong Kong: Margaret (Nicole Kidman), who moved to the city due to her husband (Brian Tee)’s job, is devastated by the disappearance of her son; Mercy (Yoo Ji-young), a Korean American Ivy League graduate whose childminder job connected her with the Hong Kong expat community, blames herself for the child’s disappearance; and Hilary (Sarayu Blue), Margaret’s friend and neighbor who is struggling in her marriage and trying to have a child.

The director of Expats, Chinese-American Lulu Wang, was somewhat compelled by Ms. Kidman to take the job.

“I mean, Hong Kong means so much to so many people,” she said in a Vogue interview, referencing her own experience of being born in Beijing and emigrating to the United States later.

“Am I an expat? Am I an immigrant? Which community do I really relate to more, and how would I tell the story of the intersection of all of these different communities?” she asked.

“I think that my hesitation just came from a sense of responsibility, really—I didn’t know if I could be all things to all people.”

As Ms. Wang was concerned, the series did trigger a variety of controversies. Some accused the director of ignoring the ongoing political turmoil in Hong Kong. Another controversy emerged in August 2021 when Ms. Kidman flew to Hong Kong to film Expats since she was given quarantine exemption despite the city’s strict COVID-19 procedures for both residents and other travellers who had to take mandatory two-to-three week hotel lockdowns.

“My home, My place, My Hong Kong,” Sham Lok Yi wrote in a Dec. 21 post sharing the trailer. In another post, she uploaded a number of stills with the caption, “What a journey. I’m happy to be part of it, happy, nervous, and expectant. See you on 1/26 AmazonPrime.”

Having six episodes in total (including the 90-minute fifth episode), Expats will premiere on Prime Video on Jan. 26, 2024, and will run weekly until Feb. 23, 2024.