Kara Wang Explores Motherhood and Grief in “From Embers”

Nowadays, Asian moms are the main character. The film “From Embers” stars Kara Wang (“Top Gun: Maverick”) as not only an Asian mom named Lily, but a recent widow and now the only guardian of her autistic son. Following the death of her husband Ron, Lily finds her life upended, needing to find a source of income, having to downsize, and moving to a new neighborhood, all while working to solve the mystery of her husband’s sudden and tragic death.

I talked to Wang about working on the independent film, portrayals of Asian mothers, and representations of grief. 

Despite having been in big blockbuster productions prior, having lunch with award-winning Chinese American Kate Bohan, the writer and director of the film, got Wang excited about the role. “It was very refreshing to be able to talk about a leading role that had so much that I could dig my teeth into,” she says, noting that sometimes with “indie films, [you] never know what you’re gonna get.”

While most independent films can be “guerilla films” with tiny budgets, skeleton crews, and limited props, Wang also recognizes that as an actor, independent films push the craft and oftentimes “actors do their best work.” 

“[In independent films,] you get the opportunity to showcase so many different colors that maybe you haven’t gotten the opportunity to before. For me, I’ve had the opportunity to work on big blockbusters like ‘Top Gun,’ where I was shooting for eight months and I got to go through flight training and all of these very, very cool things to support that role,” she reflects. “The indie experience is just very freeing, I would say. The main thing that drew me to the project was the character and the challenge of being able to play a character that’s so different than who I am in real life.”

Portraying a Complex Asian Mother in “From Embers”

Even though the past few years have brought many Asian women to the forefront, for Wang, 

Lily was a complex and three-dimensional role, a rarity still today. Navigating the multiple relationships that Lily has with her son, with the other survivors of the workplace accident that killed her husband, with law enforcement, employers, and friends — old and new — gives this maternal character the depth that real-life mothers — and women in general — experience. 

“The driving focus [for Lily] is to make sure that her son, played by Alexander Lee, has the best life possible. How do I make sure that a child, who is on the autism spectrum, can go back to normalcy for his day-to-day as soon as possible? How do I keep things steady and consistent and constant for him?” Wang remarks. “It was also really fun to play some of those lighter moments, such as when hope and love entered the equation for Lily — when she meets Matthew Morrison’s character Marty.”

Although not a mother herself, Wang resonates with the feeling that we wear so many different masks. She notes that, as women and as Asian American women, we — like Lily — are expected to play so many different roles. With all these masks, Wang says, we are often asking ourselves how do I succeed at being a professional, a colleague, a mother, a sister, a friend.

“We are naturally —  people can say unfortunately or fortunately — forced to play a lot of these roles,” the actor shares. “I’m a first-generation immigrant. My parents are both from Hangzhou, China, and I’ve seen my mother navigate the world like that — from my eyes as her daughter, very flawlessly. I’m sure she might not say the same about herself … But it’s like the resilience that comes with coming to this country and having nothing and being able to not only survive, but thrive, is something that I was really trying to bring to the character as well.”

Exploring Grief on Screen

Grief is a subtle character in “From Embers.” “It’s very clear that throughout the film, she doesn’t even have really the time or the space to grieve that loss, because her sense of survival kicks in,” Wang says. 

There is a moment in the film where Lily finds a letter that her son wrote to Ron. There are no lines spoken, but Wang shares that it was a challenging and powerful scene to perform. It’s a quiet moment — one that is few and far between for single moms — after tucking her child in, and yet, in this moment, she comes face-to-face with the echoing silence of her loss, grief, and loneliness. It’s a stirring moment in a film that is focused on life after loss, a fact of life that is rarely depicted in media. 

“That is just the human experience, and so I hope that when it comes to these harder to talk about topics like grief, healing, and mental health, it’s nice to bring representation in that way,” Wang acknowledges.

The mystery-drama “From Embers” stars Matthew Morrison (“Glee”), Kara Wang (“Top Gun: Maverick”), and Kathryn Morris (“Cold Case”) and is playing at the Cinelounge in Tiburon, California, (San Francisco Bay Area) from Nov. 8 through Nov. 14 and at Cinema Village in New York City from Nov. 22 through Nov. 28

Photos courtesy of Studio 6688