――I was looking forward to meeting you in Tokyo, but it’s too bad that the world is so crazy right now. Thank you so much for making the time for us still all the way from LA!
Lulu Wang: I know! I’m so sad I can’t be there. I hope that there is another opportunity for me to go.
――I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but I felt like Billi was myself. Thank you so much for sharing your personal story with the world.
Lulu Wang: Thank you for saying that.
――Making a film about your personal experience may not be the easiest thing to do. Why did you decide to tell this particular story?
Lulu Wang: I had to figure out how to make the best film possible be as truthful as I could, but also be respectful to my family. I was capturing them in a respectful way. So yeah, it was difficult, but any film is difficult to make.
――How did your family react to your idea when you told them?
Lulu Wang: They were very supportive. My dad said, “Is anybody going to care? Is anyone going to like the story?” So he was just happy that people did in fact care.
――How did you feel through this journey?
Lulu Wang: It’s been a really beautiful experience because I really got to go through this film with my family. They are very much part of the process of developing it. My great-aunt is in it as well.
――I heard that you actually went back to your hometown to make this film. How was that experience?
Lulu Wang: It was great! They say we should make what you know and write what you know, and so I did. I wrote what I felt very personally connected to, so it was wonderful to be able to spend that time with family in their hometown.
――As you mentioned, you even had your great-aunt in the film. How did she enjoy acting? She was a great actress.
Lulu Wang: She really loved it. She thought it was meaningful and loved acting. She wants to do it again in the future. It was great.
――One of the things I loved about this film is all the food scenes. It may be an Asian thing, but my family aren’t constantly like, “I love you!” to each other. But they always welcome me with delicious homemade meals whenever I go home, and you know that they love you.
Lulu Wang: It’s an expression of love for sure. And for me in the family because it’s an expression of love, it’s also what made it very difficult to not eat when we went back. Because if you feel very sad, you don’t want to eat. But obviously, because my grandma is there and you are lying to her, we had to make her feel like everything was fine. We had to force ourselves to eat. So I used the food really as the source of internal tension.
――It was really exciting to see “the Farewell” as well as “Parasite” making marks during the award season. It seemed almost impossible for a female Asian director to be successful in Hollywood ten years ago, but how do you feel to get this much attention?
Lulu Wang: Yeah, well, I think it’s very different that the Asian American struggle in America versus Asian filmmakers as an international community. But I think it’s great that people are now more open to stories from whether it’s Asians or Asian Americans.
――What were some of the reactions that surprised you?
Lulu Wang: A lot of people told me that they cried and they really saw the family like it was their family, the grandma was just like their grandma. And any of these people are not Asian American or Asian at all. So it was interesting that they felt like Billi also represented them.
――The film is mostly in Mandarin. Did you work on the script in Chinese?
Lulu Wang: I still speak Mandarin but I don’t read or write. So I had to write it in English, then I had a translator translate it into Chinese. And I had help from my mom because things may get lost in translation. So she would read the Chinese translations because I couldn’t read it, and she would make corrections to make it more colloquial.
――I love how the title gives you a different feeling after watching the film. Why did you call this film “the Farewell”?
Lulu Wang: Yeah, that was one reason, if you know the ending… [laughs.] Also, I think it’s a farewell to many things. It’s a farewell not to just Nai Nai but also to our childhood, to nostalgia, to innocence, you know, all of the things that she remembers.
――Did Nai Nai ever find out about you making a film about her and her family?
Lulu Wang: She found out. But I don’t know exactly how much she knows or doesn’t know. I’m waiting still to go back to see her, but obviously because of corona I haven’t been able to do that.
text Nao Machida
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