Film alumnus Kevin Lau '13 Writes for HBO's 'Lovecraft Country'

Film alumnus Kevin Lau ’13 writes for HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Lau co-wrote the show’s sixth episode, “Meet Me in Daegu,” with series creator Misha Green, and he is credited as story editor on all eight episodes. Last year, Lau signed an expanded deal with HBO; he now writes, directs, and develops for the network. 

Based on Mark Ruff’s 2016 novel of the same name, Lovecraft Country is executively produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele. The horror drama, which stars Jurnee Smollett and Jonathan Majors, follows a young Black man named Atticus as he travels through 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his father. Along the way, he encounters secrets and terrors straight out of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction. 

“Meet Me in Daegu” is a flashback episode set during the Korean War. In it, a wounded Atticus encounters a nursing student, but doesn’t remember their violent initial meeting. Vulture acknowledges the episode’s film-like quality and sharp character exploration, noting how the nurse’s story “makes us confront much of what’s transpired so far: the heartbreaking, the fraught, the violent,” and commends the episode’s critique of America’s role in war. 

Lau has been awarded the Sony Television Diverse Directors Fellowship and the HBO Access Directing Fellowship, for which he directed the comedy pilot F**cked Up. In the pilot, “a know-it-all tries to prove herself by losing her virginity on the first day of college.” The episode is available on HBOMax.

Lau’s Made in Chinatown, which was his MFA thesis film at the School of the Arts, received the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant and the SimonSays Entertainment Award for Innovative Filmmaking. At the NBCUniversal Shortcuts Competition, Made in Chinatown won Best Film, Best Writing, and Best Actor.

Currently, Lau is a staff writer for HBO’s upcoming fantasy epic House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel from Ryan Condal, Miguel Sapochnik, and George R.R. Martin. He has also written for Joss Whedon’s The Nevers and for USA Network’s Damnation. 

Lovecraft Country airs Sundays at 9 pm.