Yahoo Movies 'The Sympathizer': Canadian talent leads espionage thriller with a Vietnamese perspective on the Vietnam War
"Yes, you see a skin tone, skin colour, that is representation. But more so than that, cultural representation is so important as well," Fred Nguyen Khan said
In the new HBO series The Sympathizer (on Crave in Canada) Canadian talent is on full display, from co-showrunner Don McKellar, to actors Sandra Oh, Fred Nguyen Khan and Duy Nguyen. Also starring Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr., the show is an opportunity to tell a story set around the Vietnam War, but from a Vietnamese perspective.
The Sympathizer is based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. We're led through the story by the Captain (Xuande), a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy, who serves as narrator. At the beginning of the series, Captain is at a North Vietnamese reeducation camp, where he's ordered to write his "confession."
"I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces," he writes. "I was cursed to see every issue from both sides. I was a communist agent implanted in the South."
As Captain recounts his memories, we're brought to the final days of the Vietnam War and meet Captain's childhood best friends, "blood brothers," who have differing political views. Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) doesn't know anything about Captain's true politics, while Man (Duy Nguyen) is a communist revolutionary.
After the Fall of Saigon, the Captain is set to follow the General (Toan Le) to America, while Man stays behind, and Captain also secures space for Bon, his wife and young child on the plane to the U.S. After a harrowing journey, The Sympathizer follows the lives of Vietnamese refugees in California.
Watch The Sympathizer on Crave, Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET, with plans starting at $9.99/month
Spoiler warner: Specific details of The Sympathizer, Episode 1 included beyond this point
'I used to jump up and down every time I'd see a Vietnamese word on the screen'
For both Khan and Nguyen, being able to tell a Vietnamese was particularly exciting for the actors.
"As a Vietnamese actor, the opportunity to just tell a Vietnamese story was the biggest, 'Yes, let's do it' moment for me," Khan told Yahoo Canada. "And then on top of that, I'm such a fan of the book to begin with, and while reading the book, before I even got the role, or even the audition, Bon ... was my favourite character."
"When I was a kid, I used to jump up and down every time I'd see a Vietnamese word on the screen in American movies," Nguyen added. "The fact that we get to do the whole show in Vietnamese and English, and also featuring a 90 per cent Vietnamese cast, and then you have HBO, A24, Robert Downey Jr., Sandra Oh, ... director Park Chan-wook, oh my god!"
Watch The Sympathizer on Crave, Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET, with plans starting at $9.99/month
When we think of films or shows set around the Vietnam War, a lot of what we consume has been constructed with a western perspective. For Nguyen, who grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he lived for 17 years before he moved to Canada, working on The Sympathizer was an "educational moment."
"History is written based on where you're from, where you live, and the Vietnam war in Vietnam, it's very one sided," Nguyen said. "The history was, the North and the South are united to defeat the Americans. But what happened to the southern people? What happened when they left? Where do they go? And that part of history I did not know about until I read the book in 2016."
"Now we get to bring this story out to millions of other people and younger people, old generations, and with the southern Vietnamese people perspective. I think it's one of the most important pieces of the last decades, regarding the Vietnam War."
Khan was born in Montreal and his family moved to Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon, which gave him a particularly personal connection to the story.
"I had a very southern Vietnamese refugee perspective, from their experience and the trauma that they had to hang on to," Khan said. "My character could have been anyone from my family, really, it's very surreal and ... the whole cast actually felt a huge responsibility to tell this story with empathy, and respect and nuance."
'Blood brothers' and 'terrifying' emotional moments
A core element of The Sympathizer, is really these three "blood brothers" who have so much love for each other, even when they're on opposing ends of political ideology.
"The chemistry that we have on screen actually comes from the genuine friendship that we have off screen," Khan said. "Duy and I are from Montreal, we both live in Montreal, we were close friends before we got to work on this show. Somehow, by pure coincidence."
For Khan, while there is love and friendship to explore in the series, his character Bon also experiences significant trauma that informs his arc in the story. Specifically, when Bon is travelling with his family to the plane to American, gunfire on the airfield leads to the death of Bon's wife and child.
"It was terrifying," Khan said about executing that moment in the story. "I remember that scene on the tarmac, it was on my calendar and I was counting down the days. I was so stressed about it."
"The challenging part was to do all the emotional stuff and luckily the cast that we have, they were so supportive, and the bond that we shared made it very easy to emote in a way that I would emote if I were to lose someone like that. ... I always felt like it was a safe space to try things."
'Cultural representation is so important'
Looking at the series more broadly, with The Sympathizer being told largely in Vietnamese, Nguyen hopes it makes viewers more open to watching projects with subtitles.
"I used to watch American movies in Vietnam with subtitles in Vietnamese, because I didn't speak English, but now I get to watch The Sympathizer and I understand both languages," he said. "Hopefully we'll [make people open up] to seeing how cool the Vietnamese language is and for people to realize that it is nice to actually listen and hear about other languages, and be aware of other languages, besides English."
"I think it's important for the narrative of the story, it makes sense to have each of these people speaking in Vietnamese to each other," Khan added. "It's such an important part of representation as well."
"Yes, you see a skin tone, skin colour, that is representation. But more so than that, cultural representation is so important as well."
