'The White Lotus' Star Will Sharpe to Direct 'Crying in H Mart' Film Adaptation: It Felt Very Familiar to Me'

Will Sharpe doesn't just melt hearts on HBO's The White Lotus: He's a BAFTA Award-nominated writer and director who has a major new project on his hands.

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal that Sharpe, 36, is set to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Japanese Breakfast singer, songwriter and guitarist Michelle Zauner's 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart for MGM's Orion Pictures.

The memoir, which spent over 60 weeks on The New York Times' best-sellers list, is based on an original essay of the same title Zauner, 33, first published in The New Yorker back in 2018. It centers around her relationship with her mother Chong-mi and her Korean heritage, following Chong-mi's Oct. 2014 death from cancer at age 56.

Sharpe, a Japanese-English filmmaker who has worked as a director and writer with the likes of Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch and David Thewlis on television series and films in the U.K., tells PEOPLE that he was immediately able to relate to the cultural background Zauner depicts in her memoir.

"There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo," he says of the book. "Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family's kitchen felt very familiar to me."

An official synopsis for the upcoming film describes the project as a "coming-of age story about a half-Korean daughter who returns to small town Oregon to care for her Korean mother," depicting Chong-mi and Michelle's relationship as they learn "to see and accept one another through the formative power of music and the vibrant flavors of Korean cooking."

Zauner, 33, tells PEOPLE in a statement that she found 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[s] him the perfect director for this film."

"I found that it felt universal in its specificity," Sharpe tells PEOPLE of Zauner's memoir, which is rife with descriptions of her family's love for sharing food together. "In that it's so lovingly detailed about the experience of growing up around Korean food and the cooking of Korean food."

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"For me, it would be Japanese food and remembering growing up going to the 7-Elevens and the convenience stores in Tokyo and the dumplings that my mother would make when I was unwell," he adds. "And I felt like I could recognize that in the descriptions of the Korean porridge or the kimchi and how important that still is to Michelle and how food can carry certain other things within it about your life."

The Hollywood Reporter first reported in 2021 that Zauner would adapt her memoir into a screenplay for Orion Pictures. In March 2022, the musician and author told Consequence that she had finished the screenplay's first draft.

Crying in H-Mart will be produced by Stacey Sher and Jason Kim, with Zauner and Japanese Breakfast assisting with the film's music.

Sharpe, whose work on season two of The White Lotus helped production win outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards, won a BAFTA TV Award in 2020 for his performance in Giri/Haji. He has received multiple BAFTA nominations for his work behind the camera.