The Sympathizer (miniseries)

The Sympathizer (Cảm tình viên) is a historical black comedy drama miniseries based on the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The series was created by co-showrunners Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, with Park directing for the series as well. The series premiered on HBO on April 14, 2024, and is produced by A24 and Rhombus Media.

Premise
The series is based on the story of the Captain, a North Vietnam plant in the South Vietnam army. He is forced to flee to the United States with his general near the end of the Vietnam War. While living within a community of South Vietnamese refugees, he continues to secretly spy on the community and report back to the Viet Cong, struggling between his original loyalties and his new life.

Main

 * Hoa Xuande as the Captain, a police captain in Saigon who is secretly a communist spy for the North
 * Robert Downey Jr. in several antagonist roles including (in order of appearance):
 * Claude, a CIA agent who mentors the Captain
 * Professor Robert Hammer, the Captain's Orientalist grad school professor
 * Ned Godwin, a Congressman in Southern California trying to appeal to the local Vietnamese American population
 * Niko Damianos, an auteur filmmaker making a film on the Vietnam War, inspired by Francis Ford Coppola and John Landis
 * The Priest who is the Captain's father
 * Toan Le as the General (Trọng), a high-ranking Southern Vietnamese general that the Captain serves under
 * Fred Nguyen Khan as Bốn, the Captain's childhood best friend
 * Duy Nguyễn as Mẫn, the Captain's other childhood friend and his handler
 * Vy Le as Lana, the General's daughter and the Captain's love interest
 * Ky Duyen as Madame, the General's wife
 * Phanxinê as the Major (Oanh), an incompetent major secretly running a black market operation, whom the Captain decides to frame
 * Kieu Chinh as the Major's Mother
 * Alan Trong as Sonny Tran, a Vietnamese American reporter and the Captain's former college rival
 * Sandra Oh as Ms. Sofia Mori, a Japanese American secretary who develops a sexual relationship with the Captain

Supporting

 * VyVy Nguyen as the Major's wife
 * Kayli Tran as the Communist Spy
 * Scott Ly as Gunner Dao
 * David Duchovny as Ryan Glenn, an acclaimed but volatile method actor playing Captain Shamus in The Hamlet, loosely based on Marlon Brando
 * John Cho as James Yoon, a Korean-American actor playing Kim in The Hamlet
 * Max Whittington-Cooper as Jamie Johnson, a popular soul singer and first-time actor playing Lieutenant Bellamy in The Hamlet
 * Marine Delterme as Monique Thibault, the production designer of The Hamlet and Niko's girlfriend

Development
According to author Viet Thanh Nguyen, he insisted that any show adapted from his novel The Sympathizer be centered around Vietnamese people speaking Vietnamese. In early meetings, producers were uneasy about this requirement, but after political unrests during the Trump administration, the murders of George Floyd in 2020 and of six Asian-American women in Atlanta in 2021, the tone shifted.

In April 2021, Viet Thanh Nguyen announced that the novel had been optioned by A24 to be adapted into a television series with Park Chan-wook directing. Rhombus Media is also involved in the production. In July, HBO ordered the series from A24, and Robert Downey Jr. joined the project in a producer and co-star role. The state of California awarded the production over $17.4 million in tax credits ensuring significant production would take place in state. Marc Munden and Fernando Meirelles were also hired to direct some episodes of the series.

Casting
Casting director Jennifer Venditti opened a worldwide casting call in order to find a main cast of Vietnamese descent, ultimately hiring Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Vy Le, and Alan Trong. Recurring roles for Sandra Oh, Kieu Chinh, and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen were also announced in November 2022, and Downey was portraying several supporting antagonistic roles representing the American establishment. In May 2023, Scott Ly and Marine Delterme joined the cast, in recurring roles.

As a work about the Vietnamese refugee experience, the majority of the cast and crew are of Vietnamese origin, and more than half of the dialogue is in Vietnamese. Hoa Xuande had to take a crash course to improve his Vietnamese to prepare for the main role. The actor Phanxinê, who is also a well-known filmmaker in Vietnam, wanted to keep his involvement in the project private for as long as possible to minimize the political backlash he would receive, and stated that many friends discouraged him from participating. It took him a while to decide to take the role of The Major because the project is politically sensitive. He finally took it because he saw the role as safe as "he shows a good side of Vietnamese men." Fred Nguyen Khan and Duy Nguyễn, who play the Captain's best friends, are also best friends in real life.

Filming
Filming took place in Los Angeles and Thailand. The crew's numerous attempts to obtain permission to film in Vietnam were rebuffed by its government, and so Thailand was used as a stand-in for Vietnamese scenes. Downey shaved his head for the series in order to save time required to use a bald cap for each of the various characters he portrayed. A significant portion of Downey's performance was also improvised.

Release
The series premiered on HBO and became available to stream on Max on April 14, 2024.

Reception
On Metacritic, the series holds a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The series received much attention in the Vietnamese American community in California. For younger viewers, it presents an opportunity to showcase Vietnamese stories to a global audience. For the older generation, the series had stirred some discontent – they view the focus on the lead character, who was a communist spy, as glorifying the Communists and disparaging the South. However, the community agrees that this is a significant moment for Vietnamese representation in Hollywood.

In Vietnam
In Vietnam, where the Communist government did not allow the series to be filmed, it was also banned from being shown. At the time of the series' premiere, there was no official Vietnamese translation of the original work published in the country, even though a major publisher had bought the translation rights years earlier, shortly after the novel won the Pulitzer Prize. After the series premiered, many articles about its production that were previously published in major newspapers were no longer accessible online, as if there was a censorship directive from the highest level or due to self-censorship, although it was unevenly applied. An article in the state-run newspaper Tuổi trẻ Thủ đô described the series as "poisonous" and warned that "social media pages belonging to hostile forces [...] acclaimed the content of the series and cleverly integrated details that distorted Vietnamese history to sabotage the Party and the State" and called on young viewers to "heighten vigilance for false information regarding territorial sovereignty as well as Vietnamese history that hostile forces cleverly integrated or propagated via cinematic works." Công an nhân dân, the official mouthpiece of the Ministry of Public Security, stated that the series has "distorted content", was created by "opposing elements", and the showing of the series so close to Reunification Day was made "with negative intention, to distort the triumph of the people of Vietnam."