Summary

• Director Park Chan-wook brings his genre-bending expertise to TV with The Sympathizer miniseries on HBO, exploring the complexities of espionage and immigrant experiences.
• Director Park, alongside his team, made a conscious effort to stay true to the Vietnamese representation in the show by hiring dependable consultants for authenticity and guidance.
• With Robert Downey Jr. taking on four different roles, filming for The Sympathizer was a unique and challenging process that Director Park found both delightful and exciting.

Park Chan-wook makes his triumphant return to TV with The Sympathizer. The South Korean filmmaker became a worldwide phenomenon with the release of 2003's Oldboy adaptation, the second installment in his unofficial The Vengeance Trilogy that began with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and concluded with 2005's Lady Vengeance. He's since gone on to find acclaim with the 2009 horror movie Thirst, producing Bong Joon-ho's breakout hit Snowpiercer, the psychological thrillers The Handmaiden and Stoker, the latter of which served as his English-language directorial debut, and Decision to Leave.

Prior to The Sympathizer, Chan-wook had also lent his talents to the small screen with the 2018 BBC miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl, which he executive produced and directed all six episodes of. He also executive produced the TNT adaptation of Snowpiercer, while going on to helm three episodes of the HBO Vietnam War thriller and executive producing it with author Viet Thanh Nguyen, co-creator Don McKellar and both Susan Downey and Robert Downey Jr. via their Team Downey banner.

Based on Nguyen's novel of the same name, the show centers on a North Vietnamese spy known as the Captain whose mission as a South Vietnam army plant continues beyond the end of the Vietnam War as he heads to the US with the latter's General in the hopes of undermining his mission. Hoa Xuande leads the ensemble Sympathizer cast as the Captain alongside Robert Downey Jr. in a four-character role, Sandra Oh, Fred Nguyen Khan, Duy Nguyễn, Phanxinê, Kieu Chinh, Vy Le, Ky Duyen, Toan Le VyVy Nguyen and Alan Trong.

Ahead of the show's premiere, Screen Rant participated in a roundtable interview with Park Chan-wook and his translator to discuss The Sympathizer, his genre-bending approach to adapting Nguyen's novel, the efforts he made to stay authentic to the show's Vietnamese representation, and filming Downey Jr.'s four-character role.

Director Park & His Team "Went Out Of Our Way" To Hire "Dependable Consultants"

While the Vietnamese experience is at the heart of The Sympathizer, Chan-wook is somewhat of an outlier amid the show's creative team as a South Korean leading the charge. The director ultimately recognized his being "not fluent in Vietnamese" and from a different culture, though assured that he and his team "went out of our way" to ensure the production had "dependable consultants" to stay true to the story and characters:

Park Chan-wook: It is true that I'm not fluent in Vietnamese, and that is exactly why we went out of our way to bring dependable consultants — not only one, but many of them. And we made sure to have them reviewed, and we made sure they would train our actors. And even at the set, for every setup, before we moved on to the next one, I would obviously make sure and confirm with them to make sure that it was delivered correctly.

The interesting thing about it is, even though I don't know the language, whenever there's a take, whether I was satisfied with the performance or not, I would find out that they thought it just as the same as me. So, that is to say, in terms of the actors performing and delivering the true emotion that needs to be carried. It is not about the language, it comes from their inner core.

So, whenever I felt like it was good in terms of the emotion that I wanted to get, I would turn around and look at the consultant, then they would have their thumbs up too. So, I think it's about how it resonates and speaks emotionally, because we all understand that.

The Sympathizer Isn't A "Line-By-Line Verbatim" Adaptation (For A Good Reason)

With a 416-page source material to work off of, McKellar and Director Park had an interesting choice to make of where to begin with tackling adapting The Sympathizer. Rather than looking to do a "line-by-line verbatim" translation of the book to the screen, the group instead looked to treat the novel as "almost nonfiction rather than fiction", finding what the inciting incident of the source story was and then working to "preserve the core, the psychology and the theme" of the novel:

Park Chan-wook: I think the thing is, when you're trying to adapt an original novel, such an approach shouldn't be trying to translate this text line-by-line verbatim, because it is impossible. It is not possible to translate text into a visual medium. It is more about what you have drawn from, what you have taken away when you got to the last page of the book. And when you close the book, what kind of impression that the original novel impressed upon you.

Something like you treat it as your own experience. Or you're trying to think of treating this as if this actual incident that had happened. You treat this as almost nonfiction rather than fiction. I think that's the approach that you need to take. This gigantic clump of it, you sort of figure out what kind of incident there was within, and what kind of characters we're talking about. And within that paradigm, you should be free to explore in terms of your cinematic language, which means you don't need to strictly adhere to the order of the original novel.

Maybe you take them all apart, and you put them all together and make it into a very new thing. And actually, that is the way you can preserve the core, the psychology and the theme of the original novel. I think, I daresay, that is actually the way to actually preserve more what the original novel carries.

HBO Backing A Hollywood-Satirizing Project Was A "Critical Issue" For The Show

While seemingly the perfect project for it, The Sympathizer had an interesting hurdle to face with its Hollywood-skewering satire by partnering with HBO and A24 to bring the show to life. Director Park did note that this was a "critical issue" for him and his team on the show, and found that it actually was a unique parallel to one of the biggest themes at the heart of the story:

Park Chan-wook: When we went about making this story, I worked with Don McKellar, Caucasian-Canadian writer, and perhaps just like how the Captain's inner being is coexistence of East and West, perhaps similar to that is us having worked together as one individual.

And we talked endlessly as we worked about how we adapted this original novel, just like how the Captain carries within himself two different elements. I think that is sort of the comparison in terms of the studio coming into 2020 and so forth. I feel like, especially American studios, are going through a big change. And for HBO, this obviously required significant investment in terms of the financial investment. And yes, the show has a whole lot of subtitles, the audience needs to catch up and read, and also, it has a whole bunch of Asian cast.

Not to mention, some of them are newcomers, and HBO coming on board and supporting the show, I think, is significant in itself. And I should mention that sometimes, even more so than myself, they would actually push and make sure that how we portray Vietnamese and the country and the story was historically accurate as possible. They were not shy to invest, in terms of the time and money, so they were really trying to be all ears, when, not only me, but Viet, and also our Vietnamese casts, had opinions to share. They were all ears about it, so I was very appreciative of their gesture and their support.

Filming Robert Downey Jr.'s Multiple Roles Was An Interesting Process

In a career-first for the Oscar winner, Downey Jr. takes on four different roles in The Sympathizer as a CIA agent, an Occidental grad student professor, a California Congressman, and an auteur filmmaker. In order to capture this effect, including one scene in which all four characters interact with one another, Director Park looked at it as both a "challenge" and a "delight" as Downey Jr.'s different performances for each character was like "watching a circus act":

Park Chan-wook: In terms of the process, we had three different stand-ins, and they would be wearing identical costumes and makeups that Robert would be wearing. And whenever Robert was playing, say, Character A, then the stand-in would be performing Character B, C, D and so forth. And when Robert moved on to the portray Character B, then obviously the stand-ins would be portraying A, C and D. And then afterwards, we had composited all these plates together through VFX. Maybe it's a showcase of acting, I felt like I was watching a circus act.

That is to say, rather than me really directing the scene, I was able to sit back and enjoy his performance, because he would offer different performances for every individual take. I was very excited and I would be anticipating what would be the next performance he would come up with. So speaking of editing, yes, it is challenging to select certain takes, only because all of them are very good and entertaining. So, in other words, it's not a challenge, per se, but it's actually a delight to do so.

The thing is, even when you think you're done with the editing, if you replace certain takes with another one, then the entire tone, the entire rhythm can change, and it would result in a chain reaction, so the only bad thing about that would be it would result in much more time that we would need

Director Park Looked To His Own Genre-Blending Past For The Sympathizer

While, on the surface, The Sympathizer may seem like a straightforward spy thriller, it actually offers a wide range of genres throughout its run. Whether it's a moving tale of the immigrant experience in America, a full-on war story or hilarious spin on Hollywood filmmaking, it keeps the story moving with a wide variety of tones and pacing, all of which Director Park pulled from not only in the novel, but also his own filmography:

Park Chan-wook: So, perhaps you can say that in terms of broader spectrum of thrillers, those were the some of the movies that I have dealt with. But if you look at it carefully, all of my works have been sort of a composite of different genres. Sometimes, yes, it is true that it was stronger on the horror aspect of it, sometimes, it might be stronger on the action side. Sometimes, it might be a little leaning towards more of an erotic side.

But that is all to say, all of my works I try to mix various genres, and that is more of an approach that I'm familiar with. And actually, for me, it is much harder, much more of a challenge to just dig in and really go about attacking one specific genre, because the thing is, our lives are a composite of many different elements, just like genres.

For example, there's a romance to it, or action, perhaps disaster. We go through it, each of us go through many different things, and I think the composite of these different elements is what actually portrays, in totality, how each of us go through our lives. In addition, our original novel is a composite of different genres, too.

About The Sympathizer

Based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, THE SYMPATHIZER is an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire about the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles, where he learns that his spying days aren't over.

Check out our other Sympathizer interviews with:

• Fred Nguyen Khan & Duy Nguyễn
• Phanxinê & Kieu Chinh
• Sandra Oh & Hoa Xuande
• Susan Downey & Niv Fichman
• Vy Le, Toan Le & Ky Duyen
• Don McKellar

New episodes of The Sympathizer air Sundays on HBO and Max.