Exclusive Interview: Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Sean Wang Discusses “Nai Nai & Wài Pó,” Celebrating His Grandmothers, and More

Taiwanese American and now Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sean Wang shines a light on the cherished relationship with his Nai Nai and Wài Pó, offering an authentic portrayal of their experiences and journeys.

Nai Nai & Wài Pó, his heartfelt short-film documentary, is a personal love letter to his grandmothers, capturing their unwavering bond as best friends and roommates in their 80s and 90s. With humor and warmth, the film showcases their daily moments of joy, including dancing, stretching, and farting, reminding audiences that growing older doesn’t mean fading away.

Following its successful debut at SXSW, where it earned both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, the film has garnered further recognition, landing on the IDA shortlist and receiving Grand Jury Awards at AFI Fest and SIFF 2023. Now available on Disney+, Nai Nai & Wài Pó continues to touch hearts with its poignant storytelling.

Pop Culturalist had the privilege of chatting with Sean about Nai Nai & Wài Pó, exploring the juxtaposition between joy and pain, celebrating his grandmothers, and more.

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PC: Nai Nai & Wài Pó is a beautiful love letter to your grandmothers. There’s so much honesty and authenticity in the short. What were those early conversations that you had with them about being the subjects of your documentary?
Sean: We were living together at the time. They very much knew me as a filmmaker. We’ve made little skits and things in the past before. So the idea of making something with them was not very foreign to them. The biggest conversation that I had with them about making a movie together, and we joke about turning them into my movie stars, really was that I also wanted to go to a place that explored the pain as well as the loneliness and the histories of their lives. I wanted to go there with them to make sure that we had a personal record of those stories of their lives before they were my grandmothers and before the version of them that I know now. The most challenging part for myself was hearing those stories from these women that I love so much. They’ve experienced things that I’ve never even come close to experiencing.

PC: What you’ve done so brilliantly with Nai Nai & Wài Pó is you’ve struck that perfect balance between joy and silliness, while also covering topics and themes such as mortality and the anti-Asian hate crimes that were happening at the time, and you’ve done that so effectively through this shortened format. Was that balance something that you were mindful of during the filming and editing process? Why was that juxtaposition so important to you as a filmmaker?
Sean: It was everything. The film’s North Star was: can we make a film that’s a container of all of those tones that I feel is an accurate representation of who they are as people? It’s the silliness, the joy, the humor, the youthfulness, and the childlike spirit without ignoring the pain, the sadness, the loneliness, with the idea of mortality, what it feels like to see your friends die, and knowing that you might be next in line. What does that feel like? Those are complicated and often opposing feelings. So how do you have a movie that has them talking about farts and death? Because both of those things are honest to them as people. That was our job as filmmakers: to think about that tone, editing, and how to weave together these tones as opposed to having them next to one another and feeling that tonal whiplash. It was a long editing process to find that balance and to toe that line that all of these emotions hang on, but I think we got there.

PC: You did. Sam Davis is a long-time collaborator of yours. He brings such a unique perspective to the cultural nuances that feel like everyday life to us and our community. How did that partnership and that bird’s eye view aid you in honing in on those moments that may have otherwise been overlooked and are actually grander in scale?
Sean: It’s interesting because I always think of the cultural nuances in the films that I’ve made as personal because the culture is baked into the personal DNA of the movie. Sam and I have known each other for a decade now, and he’s often one of my closest collaborators. Outside of filmmaking, he’s just one of my best friends. He’s often the first person to read anything that I write. If he or I have a little seed of an idea, we’re always like, “What do you think of this?” We’re always bouncing things back and forth with one another.

Sam as a cinematographer has a very, very, very special gift in making very seemingly small, mundane things feel larger than life, taking things that feel very local and making them feel like a big-screen experience. All of his photography makes it feel so large but tender at the same time. It’s epic and intimate. That, to me, is Sam’s gift for photography and lens. He’s amazing at everything, but that, to me, is a specialty that he has. Going back to the film, that’s what we wanted to do with this movie. We wanted to take something that is on its surface mundane and ordinary and make it larger than life, making these two women who are often overlooked by society and culture and show people their stories, their lives, and their humanity. That’s worthy of a big-screen experience.

PC: Nai Nai & Wài Pó is part documentary, but there are also prompt moments within the film. But it was really important to you that they were authentic to who your grandmothers are. What was it like getting to collaborate with them and bring them into your world as a director? Have they started pitching ideas about making this a potential feature?
Sean: [laughs] No, they don’t have the foresight of business plans, unfortunately. But I do think there’s a franchise…just kidding. Collaborating with them was the best. The seed of this idea started from a place of joy and having fun with them. We’ve made stuff in the past, not in this sense, but we’ve made little skits and one-minute videos. This whole thing started with a Christmas card that was a one-minute video that I shot with them in 2018. It was this insane, chaotic video. It’s essentially them trying to feed me fruit. I say, “No.” They slap me, tie me up, and spank me. Wài Pó’s doing the worm. She’s chucking vodka and lighting stuff on fire. They bury me in the backyard, and then it says happy holidays. That was the seed of an idea that now became Nai Nai & Wài Pó. Those antics are our go-to. That youthfulness and that childlike spirit was easy. That felt so natural.

PC: It’s been a whirlwind few years for you. We’re in such an exciting time in this industry where it’s been a celebration of Asian excellence, and so many incredible filmmakers and storytellers, yourself included, are being spotlighted on a global scale. I know that you’ve shared in the past that as a filmmaker, it doesn’t matter what level of success you have, it’s about the personal relationship with each of your projects. But have you had time to reflect on your own contributions and knowing that there might be a young Asian aspiring filmmaker who sees your story and journey and realizes it’s possible. What does that moment mean to you?
Sean: It’s interesting because I still feel like I’m figuring it out. I feel like I am still finding my place in this industry and world. I’m still figuring out what stories I want to tell and how I want to tell them. The more that I get to talk to filmmakers that I look up to and admire, whose first films have shaped me, the more I realize that we’re all still figuring it out. It never gets to a place that we know exactly what we’re doing. Every project, every conversation, every seed of an idea is a new territory to figure out and challenge yourself.

I got to talk to Greta Gerwig yesterday at the Oscar nominees luncheon. Lady Bird was her first directorial feature. Something that she said about making that movie inspired my first movie. During our conversation, I shared that with her, and she said, “I’m so glad to hear that because that’s the hope.” The hope is that filmmakers can take something and be inspired by it. So hopefully, there’s something to latch onto here. If there’s anything, it’s that people can see that we’re all figuring it out together. This is a long journey that we’re all going on together and contributing more. We’re making the breadth of our stories more complex, three-dimensional, and more well-rounded. No one film can be everything to everybody, so the more stories we have, the more slivers of the experiences of our community we can make authentic.

To keep up with Sean, follow him on Instagram. Nai Nai & Wài Pó is available now on Disney+.