The White Lotus Star Will Sharpe Will Direct Crying in H Mart
Emily Baldwin Fresh off the feat that is making it out of a White Lotus season alive, Will Sharpe will turn his attention to Crying in H Mart. The prestige TV star will direct the upcoming adaptation of Michelle Zauner’s memoir of the same name, People confirmed on March 20. (He previously helmed the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and HBO miniseries Landscapers.) The project was first announced in 2021, when MGM’s Orion Pictures snagged the rights to the indie musician’s intimate reflections about the loss of her mother to terminal cancer and her Korean identity. The book traces Zauner’s upbringing in a mostly white Oregon school, the time she spent with her grandmother in Seoul, meeting her eventual husband, and her band Japanese Breakfast, which will provide the soundtrack for the film. Zauner will write the script.
“There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo,” Sharpe told People. “Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family’s kitchen felt very familiar to me.” Zauner, for her part, said in a statement 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 him the perfect director for this film.”
