I still haven’t been able to shake the feelings thrust upon me while watching Prime Video’s Expats. Lulu Wang’s limited series takes mammoth themes of identity, forgiveness, and personal faith and sets it against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s social structure. Ji-young Yoo, as Mercy, finds herself confronting the responsibility of a massive loss. Her fearless performance is imbued with stoic stillness punctuated with moments of rage.
Nicole Kidman’s Margaret trusts Yoo’s Mercy with the care of her children after having known each other for only a short time. One night they stop at a vibrant night market and through the fray and confusion, Mercy loses hold of the hand of Gus, Margaret’s three year old son. The commotion is overwhelming with people moving about in waves and Mercy is unable to swim against the current. One moment Gus is there, and, it seems, for the rest of their lives, he is gone. How does one walk away from that?
I couldn’t help but think about Yoo’s character’s name. It’s said so many times throughout Expats’ six episode, and it is the one thing that this young woman cannot grant herself.
“I absolutely thought about it,” Yoo says. “In many ways, it’s a very Korean to have a Biblical name if it is in English. Like Michael, John or Paul. Mercy being named Mercy gave me a lot to think about, especially because, in the book, she does go to church. I found that fascinating. I went to church in Hong Kong just to feel what that would be like since American church culture is so known whereas I don’t know anything about that culture in Hong Kong. I did that for myself. Mercy is searching for forgiveness. It’s so funny that she gives herself so little mercy and grace–to use another Biblical word–for the mistakes that she’s made. We asked Janice [Y.K. Lee], but she wouldn’t tell us. As a character, I doubt that she’s thinking about it.”
Audiences can relate to Mercy not just because of her age but also to her agility to mold herself in any scene. She’s very quick-witted and smart, and it’s easy to see why Margaret was taken with her. After Gus’ disappearance, though, that ability to relate so easily to people gets knocked off course and maybe she doesn’t know how to use that energy any more.
“I am definitely someone who takes lessons with me from my characters with every project,” she says. “It’s interesting that I can’t figure out for myself what I took with me. It was such a pleasure to get to know her, but it felt so overwhelming to deal with what she goes through. You, as a person, hope that you never experience anything that monumental in your life. You never want to put anyone else through that. The night market scene was my second or third day of shooting and it was my first day of working with Nicole [Kidman]. That fearlessness came from my own personal fearlessness of stepping into this project. This show is such a huge step for me, and it was my first time doing television. It required me to step around a lot of my own fear to dig into the work.”
That emotion understandably affects Mercy’s entire physical being. There are several moments where we see Mercy moving through public spaces but she doesn’t say a word. The sound feels like it’s pressing in on her or she wants to escape being surrounded by the crowds. At one point, Charly tells her, ‘You think you’re invisible.’
“That’s something that I love about the scenes between Mercy and Charly,” Yoo says. “Charly carries herself with a lot of joy and she surrounds herself with it. Mercy admires that and maybe she’s a bit envious of it. When she has this relationship, it’s the first time that she experiences genuine affection and love, and the fact that it comes from a woman makes the story more complicated. I think a lot of Mercy’s younger injuries come from women like her mother. Mercy can’t be honest with Charly and that leads for things to not work out, and I find that to be such a complex and beautiful part of the show.”
There is such a stark different between the scenes between Mercy and Charly than Mercy and David. With David, they constantly pick at each other, and, in one of their most memorable scenes, they tell each other harsh truths as a form of flirtation and seduction. There is an honesty between her and David that is surprisingly missing between her and Charly’s relationship even though Mercy receives genuine love from Charly.
“I love the juxtaposition between those relationships, because the one Mercy has with David is not based in affection,” she says. “You’re watching the scenes and you don’t know if they are going to kiss each other or slap each other. Should there be a chaperone here? It’s not safe for either of them. They are so desperate to be punished, and they see the darkness in each other that the rest of the world can’t understand. They see each other for the perpetrators the world thing they are. With Charly, she is given love, but it’s dishonest on Mercy’s end. She doesn’t know how to be honest unless she has a relationship like she has with David–her self-hatred is too strong.”
The triangle of forgiveness between Mercy, Margaret, and Sarayu Blue’s Hilary is lovingly complicated and poses more questions than answers. These three women are bonded together forever by this fraction of time spent together, and Mercy has to do more listening than talking in these conversations. Margaret’s voiceover in the final episode says, “You must hold onto the pain and keep on living. The pain becomes a part of you and, soon, you can’t recognize yourself without it.” As we leave Mercy, pregnant and no-doubt somewhat scared about her future, I wondered how often Mercy thinks of Margaret’s words.
“Every day,” she says immediately. “That’s how she becomes a better mother than she thinks she can be. She has to expect the pain to be there, and, hopefully, she realizes that you grow around that pain and that grief. Mercy is really hopes that she can give herself that, because she wants that for Margaret. If she could give that to Margaret, she is going to want a better life for her child. She has to believe in order to live too.”
Expats is streaming now on Prime Video.