‘The White Lotus’ star Will Sharpe set to direct ‘Crying in H Mart’ movie adaptation

Will Sharpe, who most recently starred in ‘The White Lotus’, playing Ethan Spiller in the second season of the hit series, is now slated to direct a movie adaptation of musician and Japanese Breakfast frontwoman Michelle Zauner’s memoir ‘Crying in H Mart.’

Sharpe is a BAFTA-nominated writer and director and has directed six other projects, including his debut directorial short film ‘Gokiburi’ in 2006, the movie ‘Black Pond’ in 2011, and 12 episodes of the series ‘Flowers’ from 2016 to 2018. He also directed episodes of the BAFTA-winning HBO series ‘Landscapers’ in 2021.

A story about embracing one’s cultural identities

“There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo,” Sharpe said of Zauner’s memoir, which is about her experience as a half-Korean, half-American woman and reconciling her identity and relationship with her Korean mother through music and food.

“Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family’s kitchen felt very familiar to me.”

Zauner’s memoir spent 60 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, with its heartwarming story about a half-Korean daughter who returns to her hometown in Oregon to take care of her mother, who struggle to understand one another.

The memoir is being adapted to screenplay by Zauner, who will also contribute to the movie’s soundtrack.

The right director for the adaptation

In a statement to People, Zauner expressed how difficult it was to find the right director for the movie after MGM’s Orion Pictures picked up the rights to adapt the memoir in 2021.

“It was a daunting task, to find someone I could trust with the retelling of such a personal story,” Zauner said.

“Someone who could honor my mother’s character and respect the darkest days of grief, and still make the coming of age of a half-Korean artsy outsider in a small Pacific Northwest hippie town seem real and cool.”

She said that Sharpe’s “sensitivity as a director and an actor, his ability to find humor and grace within the tragedy of the everyday, and his own personal experience, having grown up between two cultures, make[s] him the perfect director for this film.”

“I found that it felt universal in its specificity,” Sharpe said of ‘Crying in the H Mart’.

“For me, it would be Japanese food and remembering growing up going to the 7-Elevens and the convenience stores in Tokyo and the dumplings that my mother would make when I was unwell.

“And I felt like I could recognize that in the descriptions of the Korean porridge or the kimchi and how important that still is to Michelle and how food can carry certain other things within it about your life.”

No official release date for the movie has been confirmed.