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Some three months into capturing “The Sympathizer,” Robert Downey Jr. sat Hoa Xuande down. He had one thing to indicate him.
“I bear in mind Rob strolling in — he had this cheeky grin,” Xuande recalled on a latest afternoon in Los Angeles. A teaser trailer for the HBO collection, an adaptation of Viet Than Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, had simply been reduce. Downey, who’s the present’s govt producer and performs a number of roles in it, noticed definitive proof of a star-making flip in “The Sympathizer.” He wished Xuande, the star in query, to see it too.
“There’s just one time that I’ve had this expertise earlier than, and it’s once I noticed the teaser that we dropped at Comic-Con for ‘Iron Man,’” Downey mentioned. Seeing himself onscreen within the Iron Man go well with was what lastly satisfied Downey that he had accomplished justice to a frightening position.
“And as a result of I’d had that have,” he mentioned, “I knew that he wanted it.”
In some ways, Xuande (pronounced Shawn-day) did. A 36-year previous Vietnamese Australian actor who had one Hollywood credit score to his identify, he nonetheless wasn’t positive he was the precise alternative to guide a collection with such a formidable pedigree: an HBO adaptation of an acclaimed novel, produced by the Oscar-winning art-house studio A24, directed by the revered Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and co-starring a display screen legend in Downey. He wanted all of the encouragement he may get.
“I made him watch it six instances,” Downey mentioned.
Seeing himself within the trailer had lastly quieted his doubts, Xuande mentioned, over lunch at a Venice restaurant. He had flown in from his dwelling base in Sydney hours earlier and had barely settled into Downey’s spare live-work house, the place Xuande generally stays.
He first met his co-star on the fourth day of capturing — Downey was sporting a bulging prosthetic nostril and had a skittering Yorkshire terrier in tow. Is that basically him? Xuande remembers questioning from afar.
Downey had arrived on set in costume for one of many 5 totally different characters he performs in “The Sympathizer,” together with a cartoonish professor, an empty-suited congressman and a gonzo filmmaker — totally different individuals who collectively embody the face of the American institution. On this present day, Downey was Claude, the C.I.A. handler for Xuande’s character, who is named the Captain, a anonymous Communist spy whose undercover task leads him to Los Angeles after the autumn of Saigon in 1975. His position as a double agent within the United States turns into more and more dicey, bloodying his arms and touchdown him, for causes we don’t fairly know, within the Vietnamese re-education camp the place the present opens.
“He made me really feel actually at dwelling, as a lot as I may really feel,” Xuande mentioned of that first encounter. “And then he simply put his hand on my shoulder. He was like, ‘Buddy, you and me, we’re going to screw this up collectively.’”
It put Xuande comfy — barely. Before he acquired the position that might change his life, he had already let it go many instances over. He was chosen by a worldwide casting name and a monthslong audition course of that included lengthy stretches of radio silence. During these instances, he would take nighttime strolls from his dwelling to the Sydney Harbor, the place he would sit for hours, making peace with the truth that he most likely hadn’t gotten the half.
Finally touchdown it was a profound skilled leap: Beyond a facet position on Netflix’s live-action anime adaptation “Cowboy Bebop,” he had spent a decade taking minor elements in Australia. Hollywood had been a faraway notion.
Xuande grew up in Melbourne, the son of bakers who had fled postwar Vietnam.
“They needed to escape on a ship,” he mentioned. “They have been months at sea, and so they made it to Indonesia, the place they made it to a refugee camp.”
Naturally, one thing as fanciful as performing wasn’t on Xuande’s radar, and for years he dreamed as an alternative of taking part in Australian guidelines soccer professionally. “I did a random college play as soon as,” he mentioned of his early performing expertise. “I got here on for the final scene of this two-hour play and mentioned two strains.”
He added, “I did it as a result of they wanted an Asian man for that second.”
After shifting to Sydney for school and juggling odd jobs in his early 20s, he fell in with a gaggle of artistic associates and started doing novice theater. A director noticed his potential and pushed him to get coaching, main Xuande to the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts in Perth. After a number of years of hustling in largely bit elements, he had a breakthrough with “Bebop,” his introduction to the machine of a serious Hollywood manufacturing. “The Sympathizer,” although, was a trial by hearth.
Because of visa points he was unable to hitch the manufacturing till only a week earlier than the extraordinary six-month shoot started. It passed off largely in Los Angeles and Thailand. After a crash course to improve his Vietnamese, he discovered himself on set performing reverse Sandra Oh, one other award-winning co-star, and the various variations of Downey, below the course of Park, who communicated by way of a translator.
Don McKellar, who was co-showrunner with Park, mentioned Xuande seems in almost each scene. In describing the calls for of the position, McKellar mentioned, “He needed to have that sort of attraction, he needed to have that sort of masculinity, however he nonetheless needed to have the sensitivity,” including that the director “actually wished him to have an edge, too — one thing mysterious about him, that we will have a look at him and assume he’s withholding one thing.”
The present’s tone strikes a tough stability between political satire and outright tragedy, and the Captain is the character most chargeable for pulling it off. It is a task that’s, in essence, about taking part in roles: In most scenes, Xuande appears to be sporting a masks — a perpetual understanding smirk, as if he’s reacting to a joke he’s telling solely to himself.
“Everything has to have that taste of, if I didn’t chuckle at this, I’d cry about it,” Xuande mentioned of his method.
It was quite a lot of strain for an actor new to Hollywood. But Oh, who performs Ms. Mori, the Captain’s love curiosity, mentioned, “if he was terrified, I by no means felt it.”
“I’d all the time say, ‘Are you sleeping?’” she recalled. “And he was simply sort of like, ‘Nope.’”
On set, Oh typically stepped up for Xuande, demanding time or boundaries for a newcomer who was immediately on the high of the decision sheet. “Sandra mothered me — she would converse up on my behalf once I didn’t really feel comfy to,” Xuande mentioned. “And Robert would father me. He would simply take care of me on the opposite facet of issues.”
Xuande shares extra display screen time with Downey than anybody else, however with Downey’s a number of roles, most days required rediscovering their dynamic.
“It was sort of like we have been blind courting,” Downey mentioned. Their partnership made the latest Oscar winner (for “Oppenheimer”) nostalgic for his days as a youthful star making movies with seasoned actors like Anthony Hopkins and James Woods.
“I used to be attempting to convey the perfect of what I acquired and cross it on to him,” Downey mentioned.
Xuande is attempting to remain levelheaded about his personal publicity to the highlight and what it means for his profession. He hopes “The Sympathizer” will get one other season — Nguyen wrote a sequel, “The Committed,” printed in 2021 — however Xuande is aware of the trade may be fickle.
“I hope that it results in different alternatives,” he mentioned. “But I’ve been saying to my associates that this could possibly be it.”
He’s joking — kind of. Even with such a big-ticket collection below his belt, he nonetheless has the mentality of a gigging actor, climbing his means up.
“You by no means know: It could possibly be months, years, in between work,” he mentioned with a touch of the Captain’s smirk. “But I’m blissful I acquired to do that.”
