SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the first episode of HBO‘s limited series The Sympathizer, which premiered on April 14.
“All right, see you stateside,” says Robert Downey Jr’s Claude quips with some gallows humor to Hoa Xuande’s The Captain near the end of the first episode of HBO’s The Sympathizer as communist North Vietnamese forces bombard soon-to-fall Saigon in 1975.
If the slippery CIA officer was the only role Oscar winner Downey portrays in the multi-genre adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel, it would capture a lot of attention on or off cable. However, Downey plays several characters in multicultural and multinational The Sympathizer from showrunners Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar as the action moves from the dying days of the American War, as it is known in Southeast Asia, to Southern California and back again.
Along with the music-fan spymaster and mentor to the Captain, Downey also pops up as a scheming congressman, a grad school professor and self-absorbed Hollywood director seeking to make the definitive movie of the Vietnam War.
It is a coup de maître.
A coup de maître that Oldboy director Park conceived to bluntly make a point. The acclaimed filmmaker revealed his thinking behind the move to a FYC panel for The Sympathizer on the Paramount lot last week before the show premiered.
“I came to realize these guys are actually one and the same because they’re doing all different kind of things, but essentially they’re representing America as a whole,” Park told Nguyen of the American characters in the book. “I was planning to cast all of the great actors for each of the roles … so Mark Ruffalo for this role, and then Josh Brolin for this role,” he added via translator before a packed Paramount Theatre after a screening of the opening episode.
“But the thing is, if we have all these great actors, and they perform superbly, then … each of the characters would come alive, and that would actually subvert my original intention that these characters are supposed to be one and the same,” Park further explained onstage with Nguyen, McKellar, cast members Downey, Sandra Oh, Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Duy Nguyen and Eps Susan Downey and Niv Fichman. “So I thought I would flip the script and that one actor will be playing all these roles. So who should it be? Well, the one and only Robert.”
“I am a blunt instrument,” Downey deadpanned to laughs from his fellow Sympathizer panelists and the screening audience.
“I feel like the exploitation and appropriation and marginalized of peoples is something that I’ve witnessed in my many decades in this medium of film and TV,” a thoughtful Downey said. “And it was really interesting to have the mirror held up and say, ‘How would you like to represent all the different ways in which you’ve witnessed these sorts of, these degrading acts take place in society, in media, in the way a culture assumes the other is meant to be made small and just part of its story?’
“It was a great opportunity and a challenge,” he added.
Or, as Claude says to Toan Le’s the General as he, the double-agent Captain, other high-ranking South Vietnamese military officials and their families prepare to flee: “C’mon, we’re CIA — we’ll figure something out.”
Hoa Xuande, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Susan Downey and Robert Downey Jr. at the ‘The Sympathizer’ Portrait Studio held at the Paramount Theatre
Michael Buckner for Deadline
Niv Fichman, Sandra Oh, Duy Ngyuen and Fred Nguyen Khan
Michael Buckner for Deadline
Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar
Michael Buckner for Deadline
(L) Robert Downey Jr. and Hoa Xuande; (R) Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey
Michael Buckner for Deadline
(L) Fred Nguyen Khan and (R) Niv Fichman
Michael Buckner for Deadline
(L) Hoa Xuande and (R) Duy Nguyen
Michael Buckner for Deadline
(L) Sandra Oh and (R) Viet Thanh Nguyen
Michael Buckner for Deadline
The seven-episode The Sympathizer airs Sundays at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. and streams on Max soon afterward. The limited series is a co-production of HBO, A24 and Rhombus Media, produced in association with Moho Film and Cinetic Media.
As well as the Paramount Theatre panel taking place last week, Deadline went backstage with The Sympathizer cast and creatives to discuss the vision and path to bringing the novel to the screen – take a look: