Brian Tee (‘Expats’): ‘It really invigorated me as an artist… I had a deep connection to it immediately’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
SPOILERS: This article and video contain spoilers about “Expats” episodes.
“It really invigorated me as an artist” admits “Expats” star Brian Tee about his role on the Amazon Prime Video limited series. For our recent webchat he adds, “I had a deep connection to it immediately, because I myself personally have a daughter. I have an eight-year-old, and for anyone to lose one of their children is, you know, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: Yong Ok Lee (‘Expats’ production designer)
“Expats” was created and directed by BAFTA nominee Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”), based on the 2016 novel “The Expatriates” by Janice Y. K. Lee. The six-episode drama revolves around three expatriate women and the people that orbit their lives. Oscar and Emmy winner Nicole Kidman (“The Hours,” “Big Little Lies”) stars as Margaret, an American expatriate living in Hong Kong when tragedy befalls her family. Tee co-stars as Margaret’s grief-stricken husband Clarke, alongside Sarayu Blue as Margaret’s struggling neighbor Hilary, Ji-young Yoo as troubled Korean expat Mercy who is befriended by Margaret after a chance encounter and Jack Huston (“Boardwalk Empire”) as Hilary’s cheating husband David.
The series deftly explores the impact of grief and loss on a group of people living far away from home, but who become inextricably linked by an unforeseeable tragedy. Tee’s character Clarke carries a lot of the emotional weight throughout the series because it is through him that the audience contemplates the various stages of grief that a distraught parent might be experiencing in the face of the unimaginable loss of a child. It also examines grief and loss from a masculine perspective, including the often inevitable stoicism, selflessness and expectation that befalls most men, especially fathers, in complex emotional crises. “We didn’t want to stereotype a particular grief, status or character, as far as being a man, whatever that means,” Tee explains. “I think what I really wanted to bring to it was that sense of vulnerability and connection in that grieving process,” he says.
Tee appreciated being given the space to find his way through this character’s journey, thanks to the creative team of mostly women behind the series. “I’ll be very frank, I wouldn’t necessarily be here sitting with you talking about this this series, or myself, without standing on the shoulders of these women that developed it, that produced it, that created this particular show. And I can even go on further and back into my life, and literally on the backs of my mother and my grandmother and my aunt, literally carrying me around and nurturing me to become the human that I am today along, with my wife and my own child. So those life experiences all embodied what this show is, and how I related to it, and especially the extremely powerful women that have brought it to life.”
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