From drifting cars and saving lives in previous acting roles, actor Brian Tee revealed that his role as a father in Lulu Wang’s “Expats” series has been the heaviest character he has ever had to portray in his almost two-decade career.
The Japanese-born American actor has starred in over 70 films and TV shows, including “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006), “The Wolverine” (2013) and NBC’s hit series “Chicago Med,” but he has never related to a character as he much as he did in “Expats” portraying Clarke, who loses a child in the middle of a bustling night market in Hong Kong.
“Clarke is one of these characters that I relate to the most, as far as all the characters I’ve ever been able to play. And it’s the first time I get to play a father,” Tee tells NextShark. “Being a father, I can relate and connect to Clarke in so many other ways that are so incredibly nuanced by just purely my experience with my child… And from there, I kind of expanded into, ‘what would it be like for this particular tragedy to happen that you would never wish upon your worst enemy?’”
via Amazon MGM Studios
Based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s 2016 novel “The Expatriates,” Wang’s “Expats” follows three American women — Margaret (Nicole Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue) and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) — living in Hong Kong whose families are brought together by tragedy. The six-episode drama tackles grief, purpose, privilege, victimhood and culpability and geographic displacement, among other themes.
Tee believes that the universal relatability achieved by director and writer Wang created a profound effect that allows audiences to connect with the characters instead of merely feeling sympathy. He expressed gratitude for working with Wang, who operated on an “elevated level.”
“What Lulu Wang did was so incredible,” Tee says. “To bring all of these different characters experiencing different things through this particular trauma…
