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The White Lotus actor Will Sharpe will direct the forthcoming film adaptation of Japanese Breakfast singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner’s critically acclaimed best-selling memoir, Crying in H Mart.
Sharpe starred as Ethan, the husband of Aubrey Plaza’s character Harper in the second season of the HBO hit The White Lotus. He also is a BAFTA Award-nominated writer and director, ready to take on a highly anticipated new project.
The author expressed her excitement for Sharpe to join the production on Instagram writing, “It was a daunting task, to find someone I could trust with the retelling of such a personal story. 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 continued, “In that spirit, I am so relieved to have found Will Sharpe and am beyond delighted that he will be the director of Crying in H Mart. I believe his sensitivity, as a director and an actor, and his own personal experience, having also grown up between two cultures, will be tremendous assets.”
She cited his work on the British black comedy-drama sitcom Flowers, and the Benedict Cumberbatch film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which Zauner said “speak to his ability to conjure lofty, vulnerable performances, to find humor and grace within the tragedy of the everyday. They are a precious collection of talents that make him the perfect fit for this film.”
In 2021, MGM’s Orion Pictures purchased the rights to Zauner’s 2021 novel. Zauner will provide the soundtrack for the feature film as well as write the script. Her book depicts her years growing up as one of the only Asian American students at her school in Oregon, and the time spent at her grandmother’s apartment in Seoul. It also covers her time as an adult, breaking into the indie pop music scene under the name Japanese Breakfast and meeting her husband. At its core, the story revolves around Zauner’s relationship with her mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s then that Zauner began to unpack her feelings of identity as both a daughter and as a Korean American.
The memoir spent 60 weeks on The New York Times’ best-sellers list and is based on an original essay of the same title Zauner published in The New Yorker in 2018.
As a Japanese-English filmmaker, Sharpe told People, “ There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo. Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family’s kitchen felt very familiar to me.” He continued, “I found that it felt universal in its specificity. In that it’s so lovingly detailed about the experience of growing up around Korean food and the cooking of Korean food.”
While we await a release date and who will be casted, keep Crying in H Mart on your radar and stay tuned for updates.
