Lifestyle
Nicole Kidman leads an ensemble of privileged, disconnected American 'Expats'
Margaret (Nicole Kidman) is an expat American living in Hong Kong, grieving as a mother and a wife.
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Margaret (Nicole Kidman) is an expat American living in Hong Kong, grieving as a mother and a wife.
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Nicole Kidman has done a lot of different things in film: she’s been a horny schemer in Malice, a strong-willed young Irish immigrant in Far and Away, she was even Virginia Woolf in The Hours. But in television, she specializes in women who are rich and haunted. Haunted by a nightmarish marriage in Big Little Lies, haunted by the possibility that her husband is a murderer in The Undoing, and now haunted by a tragedy in Expats, the splashy Amazon series adapted from Janice Y.K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates, about three American women who are not from Hong Kong, but live there.
Kidman plays Margaret, a landscape architect. When we meet her, Margaret seems to be in a fog, barely engaged with her son and daughter, or with her husband, Clarke (Brian Tee). Clarke’s job is the reason the family has come from New York to Hong Kong, and at the opening of the series, he’s secretly seeking comfort in a church because something bad has happened. When an innocent question about a child named “Gus” causes Margaret to flee a room, the nature of that something bad begins to emerge.
Hilary (Sarayu Blue) lives in the same fancy building as Margaret, and it’s clear they’ve been friends, although now, there is tension between them. Margaret has hurt Hilary somehow, and Hilary is finding it difficult to reconcile. Hilary and her husband, David (Jack Huston), have been trying to have a baby around the edges of her busy professional life and his questionable trustworthiness. Their marriage is in trouble, in both ways Hilary knows about and ways she doesn’t, yet.
Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) is a young woman working catering jobs who not infrequently finds herself explaining to people she meets that she isn’t local, and isn’t Korean but Korean American, and doesn’t speak Cantonese. She provides a voiceover prologue to the series that makes it clear that she feels very guilty about something, and that she’s having trouble moving on from it.
Production (sour) notes
At this point, it’s worth taking a moment to note the lengthy and sometimes stormy history of this production. The Expatriates was published in 2016, and news that Nicole Kidman’s production company had acquired the rights emerged in early 2017 — just before the premiere of Big Little Lies on HBO. The final major piece of the Expats puzzle slid into place in late December 2019, when Lulu Wang, just months after the release of her film The Farewell, came on board to direct, write and executive produce “multiple episodes.”
During filming in 2021, Kidman and several crew members got an exemption allowing them to avoid the COVID quarantine rules that applied to everyone else upon arrival in Hong Kong. As The New York Times reported at the time, there was anger not only among the city’s residents, but in its legislature. It was a bitter pill, it seems, that this production about rich outsiders who paid little attention to the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong was being given a blessing to hand-wave regulations meant to protect those same ordinary people.
Lulu Wang (center) directs Ji-young Yoo and Nicole Kidman as Mercy and Margaret.
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Lulu Wang (center) directs Ji-young Yoo and Nicole Kidman as Mercy and Margaret.
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Perhaps most important, filming was taking place — and airing is taking place — during a dangerous and painful time in Hong Kong’s history. (It’s a massive story defying a quick summary, but one recent update came from NPR’s Emily Feng in December. The headline: “Beijing tightens its political grip on Hong Kong.”) In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wang talked about the fact that the show “interrogates privilege” and described how the show was shot during the pandemic. She did not, however, say much about filming and airing a show largely about oblivious rich people when this is the political backdrop.
Of course, given past reporting on how censorship has affected Amazon’s content decisions in India, growing censorship laws in Hong Kong, and China’s treatment of disfavored speech and groups (again, here’s Emily Feng), it’s hard to believe Wang and the rest of the writers had anything like a free hand in dealing with politics while they shot in Hong Kong. And nobody seems eager to disclose what the limitations might have been.
If you can’t say anything important, should you say nothing at all?
What there is of an effort to address the fraught politics of contemporary Hong Kong comes in the fifth episode, “Central.” A double-length installment, it switches the focus to a set of characters we’ve never or rarely spent time with before: a couple of Hong Kong students, a rich Hong Kong woman who’s trying to find a new “helper” for her house, and the two “helpers” who work for Margaret and Hilary’s families. Essie (Ruby Ruiz) and Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla) are both Filipina, so they too are far from home, but their circumstances are very different from the ones Margaret and Hilary face. Over the course of one long night that includes a power outage, protests swell … and then they rather quietly subside. Someone is arrested and it’s worrying, but he’s unharmed.
The series only occasionally takes a wider view of the city and its population, but the focus unfortunately remains too narrowily focused on a particular kind of expat struggle.
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The series only occasionally takes a wider view of the city and its population, but the focus unfortunately remains too narrowily focused on a particular kind of expat struggle.
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Maybe it’s better than nothing that Expats acknowledges the existence of the strife in Hong Kong, even if it does so very nonspecifically, focusing on the broader notion that there are protests and there is disruption, rather than saying much about what the protests are about. (Again, it’s hard not to wonder whether a fairly dispassionate presentation of protests as a historical fact devoid of detail was a freely made choice.) But this episode feels attached to the series like a rabbit’s foot to a keychain, more for the blessings it’s supposed to bring than for its function. So, maybe it’s not better than nothing. Maybe doubling down on the degree to which Hilary and Margaret, in particular, are ignoring the city under their feet would have made more sense.
Some of the early publicity around this series suggested that it was a satire. The book may well be a satire, but this series is not a satire. Margaret and Hilary are selfish, and the existence of the expats we meet implicates them in a variety of destructive systems as they throw parties and talk only to each other, enjoying the parts of life in Hong Kong that are pleasurable and avoiding the parts that are not. But mostly, Hilary and Margaret are presented as sympathetic, as our protagonists, guilty of excess but little culpability for their circumstances, much like the women in Big Little Lies. Kidman’s gift for portraying the grief that Margaret tries to bury under a layer of ice isn’t witty, quite; it’s her pain that dominates.
The writing of the series cannot seem to lower its pH and satirize these women, or even to let go of any claim they might have to victimhood. Margaret’s passing interest in news reports about crackdowns on protests is distasteful, but it’s not connected to her story; it’s just a flaw here, like a short temper. In individual moments, our three women — Hilary and Margaret at least — may be presented as insensitive, but that doesn’t make the series an incisive critique of them. Sour milk does not satirize the dairy industry just because it tastes bad.
Mercy is a different story. Mercy is interesting, because while she’s also an expat, she’s quite a different kind. Yoo imbues her with complex, guilt-ridden believability, making her an outwardly confident young woman with an thick hide that she hobbles off to repair after something hurts her. It’s the strongest performance in the series, and it’s the one that holds up best under the strain of the show’s uncertain footing.
Marriage, Privilege, Redux?
David (Jack Huston) and Hilary (Sarayu Blue) navigate a messy marriage.
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David (Jack Huston) and Hilary (Sarayu Blue) navigate a messy marriage.
Jupiter Wong/Prime Video
The most perplexing thing about Expats is that its story has almost nothing to do with the fact that these women are expats. You could pack up this series and fly it to Manhattan, tell the same core stories about these three women (Margaret’s loss, Mercy’s guilt, Hilary’s marriage), and change … almost nothing. In fact, you could ship it to Monterey to be the third season of Big Little Lies, and it would have a lot in common with the other seasons (tragedy, guilt, marriage).
Perhaps in an effort to avoid saying the wrong thing about expats, or about Hong Kong, Expats winds up saying nothing about those things at all. The insularity of a woman living abroad who doesn’t speak the local language is a perhaps ironic mirror of the insularity of a story that doesn’t take much notice of its setting other than as scenery.
There was probably a different vision for this show at some point. A vision of it as glamorous and gorgeous and darkly funny (darkly funny like The Farewell was), making affluent people who are expats or even just tourists squirm in recognition. But along the way, it became something far less interesting than that: a good-looking rich-people melodrama. Moreover, it’s a project that invites you, right from its title, to be bewildered by its indifference to life in Hong Kong. It’s like showing up at a billionaire’s house and taking 100 pictures of the koi pond from every angle, while the house is burning down behind you. There’s nothing wrong with the photos you’ve taken, but there is the feeling you could have captured something far more worthy of your attention by just turning your head.
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
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Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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