Expats breakouts Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo are ready for their close-ups

Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo are swapping “I love yous” with each other over Zoom and reminiscing about the pineapple buns and noodles they ate in Hong Kong, where they were expatriates as they filmed the limited series Expats.

“You don’t want to start this,” Blue tells EW when asked about the best foods she ate in the region. “I’ll keep going.” Yoo, in her own frame, adds, “Literally, you’ll have to stop us.”

The “I love yous” come after Yoo ruminates on the human connection at the center of Expats, filmmaker Lulu Wang’s series adaptation of Janice Y. K. Lee's novel The Expatriates — and the exchange certainly contrasts the pained connection their characters share on screen. 

Set in 2014 Hong Kong amidst the Umbrella Movement, Expats traces the interconnected lives of three American women residing in the region, each bound by a single tragedy: Margaret (Nicole Kidman) is undone by the disappearance of her youngest son Gus (a very adorable Connor James Gillman), who vanishes at a night market under the inattentive watch of Mercy (Yoo), an adrift college grad she recently met aboard a yacht. Margaret’s friendship with neighbor Hilary (Blue) has since strained following the tragedy, after she cast suspicion on her husband David's (Jack Huston) whereabouts. That distrust has also seeped into Hilary and David’s troubled marriage, previously splintered by infertility and now fractured from David’s affair with Mercy.

Wang delicately weaves together a moving narrative about accountability and blame, packing an emotional punch as she examines life after loss — whether it be the loss of a child or loss of a past self. Kidman is remarkable, as is Brian Tee as her stoic but also-broken husband Clarke, but it’s Blue and Yoo who steal the show, making off like revelatory bandits. The stars speak to EW about playing unmoored women, putting the mystique of Kidman aside, and being terrified of the challenge.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was it about the characters that drew you to the gig?

SARAYU BLUE: What I got really excited about was seeing this woman who's 40 and on this journey of getting to know herself. We really watch her grow up in the show. We get to see her questioning whether she wants to be a mom [and] navigate a marriage that's not what she thought it was. These are such real human moments for women. To be a South Asian woman and get to play that level of complexity was really magical. 

JI-YOUNG YOO: No matter [how hard Mercy] tried, she would fall short. That hit me so hard when I first met Mercy as a character. I was really emotionally impacted by that. Also, the scale of what she's going through is so big and complicated. I think any actor would be pretty excited at the scale of things you get to play with in the show. 

Sarayu, you previously said you were terrified when Lulu offered you the role. What was the fear?

I think when our dreams come true, it’s really scary. My whole career I’ve had this energy of, “Put me in, coach! Let me at it! I want a shot! I want to show 'em what I can do! Let me in the ring!” And then I get the shot and it's like, oh my god, it came true. I have to do this now. I have to be good enough to meet Lulu Wang's brilliant direction and act with Nicole Kidman and Ji-young Yoo and Brian Tee and Jack Huston. It's meeting the role. It was terrifying in the best way. There were definitely moments I was deeply unsure of myself and crossing my fingers, but it was one of the most exciting challenges.

Tell me a bit about how you both tapped into the mindset of these unmoored women. 

YOO: When everything is on the page, you don't have to do a whole lot of digging. Malgosia [Turzanska], our costume designer, really helped me build the attributes of Mercy — the levels of jewelry that she wears and types of fabric she likes. Malgosia described Mercy as a patchwork of all these different pieces that she's taken from other people in order to try and weave together some sort of quilts of an identity. I loved that and that felt very representative of the Asian American experience and also Mercy, [who feels] like she doesn't have any identity outside of what she can take from other people. 

BLUE: The marriage being fractured is unmooring, but a fractured friendship, that's something that I've really seen happen — particularly, women friendships. We grow, we change, some [friendships] just fall apart. It's an interesting conversation that I don't think we delve into a lot in storytelling. There's something so unmooring about both of those things happening at the same time. [Hilary’s] whole world is falling apart. There's an earthquake under her feet, a chasm growing. To feel that, I think it was a combination of life experience, but also the writing. I mean, what Ji-young said: the writing gives it to you. 

How did you build your strained dynamics with each other and with Nicole?

BLUE: That was just great chemistry. We got to have time to get to know each other and put all the mystique enigma of Nicole Kidman aside and do the work. That's what's great about Nicole, she really wants to make sure we're all in it together. She's not trying to keep that mystique alive. I feel like we all really bared our souls in this show and we had to be able to be vulnerable with each other. You just tell the truth and that's all there, and that again is a testament to our incredible writing team.

YOO: And also just being able to trust that your scene partners are going to show up and be ready to do the work. In terms of creating the relationships between characters, that was one of the easiest parts, because the ensemble is just so strong.

What do you hope viewers take away from the story?

BLUE: There are a few things that I really resonate with in the show, but I [hope] viewers take away that you can have an incredible story with an enormously diverse cast, and give a diverse cast of talented people who may not have had opportunities to [play] incredible characters and it will be compelling. That is to me something that I really hope continues to move forward.

YOO: I hope people take away that life is random and unpredictable and horrible. Things can happen at any moment, but we have the power to love each other and tell each other how much we care about one another — so to never take that for granted and express our feelings for one another while we have the opportunity.

BLUE: I love you!

YOO: I love you, too!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of Expats release Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.

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