Expats: Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo on Playing Flawed Women and Navigating Blame

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Amazon Prime Video's Expats. Read at your own risk!]

Expats is about to get even more complex. 

Prime Video's six-part limited series from The Farewell's Lulu Wang, based on Janice Y. K. Lee's 2016 novel The Expatriates, follows the complicated dynamics of three American women — Margaret (Nicole Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) — whose lives are turned upside down when Margaret's young son, Gus, goes missing at a Hong Kong night market. By the end of the flashback-heavy second episode – the series' first two hours dropped Friday – the calamity of that traumatic event, Mercy's direct involvement in it, and how much it changes each of the women's lives in dramatic ways becomes the driving force behind the rest of the series.  

The scene at the night market happens in a flash, as life events usually do; it's only moments later that the severity of the circumstances crystallize. While Margaret was busy with her daughter, responsibility fell on Mercy – a young college graduate on a trial run for a babysitter gig with the family – to look after Margaret's two sons at the bustling marketplace. All evening long, Mercy had a firm grasp on Gus' hand. But as she distractedly texted a friend and let go of Gus' hand, causing him to disappear offscreen, that seemingly innocuous lapse in judgment proved life-altering. 

"Mercy's just desperately trying to find a way to move forward, if she can move forward at all," Yoo tells TV Guide. The young actress, along with Blue, broke down key scenes from the first two episodes of Expats and discussed changes that were made in bringing the series to life on the small screen.

Expats is an incredibly dense drama adapted from Janice Y. K. Lee's novel, The Expatriates. Did you feel the need to familiarize yourself with the source material before diving into the series?

Sarayu Blue: I read the book as soon as I got the audition. I started reading it because I wanted to get a better understanding of the story and the world. I was given sides and not the full script, so I had questions about Hilary, about Margaret, about Mercy. I wanted to get a better handle on it. Of course, I devoured it. And I did not revisit the book once we started filming because the scripts were so fleshed out and detailed and beautiful, and I wanted to make sure I served that story fully without getting too attached to other versions. Janice was a big part of these scripts [as a writer on the series], so I felt confident that I could trust in what we were filming.

Ji-young Yoo: I only had the sides when I auditioned, so I got the book and immediately started reading it. The way Janice wrote the book, it was really helpful for me in terms of the interior life of Mercy as a character of how she thinks and the way she sees the world. And I really used that as a framework and then filled in the rest of the details with the script and with conversations between the actors and Lulu and all the heads of departments who helped shape the visual of the character as well.

There are crucial changes that were made in bringing the book to life on the small screen. For instance, Hilary is Indian American in the series, which adds a cultural specificity to her backstory and informs a lot of her views of motherhood by way of her relationship to her parents. How did you feel about specific character shifts?

Blue: It was surprising in a really exciting way. Where Hilary got flushed out and built out had a lot to do with the entire writers' room, you know, and [writer] Gursimran Sandhu had a big part in Hilary's storyline, as well as Alice Bell and Janice Y. K. Lee and Lulu together crafted a South Asian Hilary, and it really gave her a different set of circumstances. I shouldn't say different, but because the elements of it, of course, are the same. But because Hillary is now South Asian, there's a different level of specificity that comes along with that. I really felt excited that they chose to make her South Asian and delved into this world so that we could bring the mother and the father in, and we could bring in what that whole world looked like and what it felt like for her growing up and how Hilary was then and how she is now. It was an amazing gift as a South Asian actor to get a role like that.

Yoo: One of the big changes, I think, is probably Charly [played by Bonde Sham]. (The character is gender-swapped from The Expatriates, where Charly is a boy, to Expats, where Charly is a girl.) I didn't know about that until I got the role and started reading the scripts. But overall, a lot of Mercy's center and her core didn't change too much. Anything that's a little bit of a departure from the book in our show just gives a little more color and a little more dynamic complexity to Mercy who's already so complicated.

The first episode establishes what's transpired in the year since Margaret's son, Gus, disappeared. The second episode fills in the blanks on what happened leading up to that event at the night market, which leads to the unraveling of these three women's lives. What did you take away from what transpired in the first two episodes and how your characters react to the inciting incident?

Yoo: So much of Mercy as a character is established in the first two episodes, specifically with the voiceover of what she's thinking and feeling. Some of those scenes at Clarke's birthday and at the night market were the first scenes that we shot in the show, so it also felt kind of like getting dropped in and the feeling of almost being in over my head. Because the show is so big and working on a project at this scale and at this level was very intimidating for me. And I think Mercy, similarly, is very intimidated by everything that's happening around her. I honestly relied on a lot of the emotions I was going through. When Nicole chased me [at Clarke's birthday party], I felt real fear.

What Hilary endures throughout Expats is illuminating. That she's the one who chooses not to have a baby.

Blue: It's so refreshing. I know I keep saying that. That's what I love about every character in the show, truly, is that you see dimension in almost every single character and you see nuance and complexity. Like, oh my God, no one's getting out of this easy. Regarding Hilary in the aftermath [of Gus' disappearance], what we're watching is her going through two breakups at the same time – the best friend and the husband. I almost feel like Hilary's clinging. In Episodes 1 and 2, she is clinging so tightly and grasping and hoping that she can just piece everything back together. Be the glue, hold it, keep it, and then eventually you really do watch her having to release it all. The journey becomes what happens when you can't keep it together. How do you handle it then?

We have to talk about the scene at the noodle shop with Margaret and Hilary, where the two of them are enjoying each other's company, drinking and having an impromptu dance party. The second Margaret sees her own reflection, the guilt wipes away that temporary joy and she visits the night market where her son went missing. Can you break down that turn?

Blue: It's so great, right? That's again, a testament to Lulu and her storytelling because there's this moment of just abandonment and joy. Then there's a harsh pivot and it's over, and it's right back to life. And it's right back to life after a tragedy, and it's right back to grief and loss. There's constant curveballs in the show for everybody, and I really think that's what adds to the complexity and the nuance.

Where is Mercy's head at by the end of the second episode since she's the one who lost sight of Margaret's son? 

Yoo: Shell-shocked, probably. You're almost at a loss describing what a lot of the characters are going through over the course of the show. It defies description. I think Mercy's just desperately trying to find a way to move forward, if she can move forward at all. That's where she starts at the end of Episode 2 and it's her journey through the rest of the show.

Hilary had a very different friendship to Margaret prior to Gus' disappearance to what it's become after. And the same can be said for Mercy's dynamic with Margaret prior to the night market incident. What can you say about where your characters' relationships go?

Blue: For Hilary and Margaret, there was a real bond or real love that they found in each other – a real camaraderie. They bonded over expat life. They're joking about their husbands and having dinners about town, and after, it's a pretty drastic turn. It changes everything. It's a real example of how one moment in time [can happen] and everything's different, and they'll never heal from it. They never really come back from it. It affects Hilary's marriage.

Yoo: Mercy is someone who really believes that she has bad luck and that she's cursed. And I think she had hoped that maybe there are ways to undo it. You can actually see it in her jewelry, something that [costume designer] Malgosia [Turzanska] and I built is, if you look at her jewelry, there's crosses, there's symbolism from different cultures. It's this attempt to glom on to anything that might save her a little bit. I think Margaret and the family is an extension of that – of seeing a family that is so happy and so beautiful, and just wanting to know what that feels like, to be a part of it, and to get close to that. That's what initially draws Mercy to Margaret. When everything goes horribly wrong, it's this confirmation that Mercy not only has awful luck, but she can actually spread that to other people. She's trying to isolate as much as she can and make sure that her bad luck doesn't rub off on anybody else.

Does she blame herself or is she to blame for Gus' disappearance? 

Yoo: Mercy absolutely blames herself. Where she falls on the spectrum of victim-perpetrator, audience members should decide that one. But Mercy as a character holds herself incredibly responsible for what happened.

Sarayu, audiences know you primarily for your comedy work. Are you ready for viewers to see you in a more dramatic light? 

Blue: I will say this, I'm excited but I'm actually just very vulnerable and scared and hopeful. It's one of those things where I feel like I really bared my soul, and I hope that people are kind.

New episodes of Expats drop every Friday through Feb. 23 on Prime Video.