Park Chan-wook doesn’t actually know how Robert Downey Jr. responded to his characters in “The Sympathizer.”
The acclaimed Korean director worked with Downey for the first time while adapting Viet Thanh Nguyen’s bestselling novel for HBO, and he expected a big-name star at that level to drag out the negotiation process after getting an offer. To Park’s surprise, Downey circled back quickly, and the two of them started to dig into his character — his characters.
Downey, who also executive produced the series along with wife Susan, plays four characters (so far) in the limited series, each with a unique look and voice and motivations — all of which were built in process. There’s C.I.A. agent Claude, the Orientalist Professor Hammer, filmmaker Niko, and Congressman Ned Godwin, and Downey appears to thoroughly enjoy embodying every single one. In his review of the series, IndieWire’s Ben Travers wrote that “there’s a comic quality to Downey’s depictions that effectively conveys the twisted worldview and bizarre nature of his characters.”
“We had a whole lot of conversations starting from, where are these characters from?,” Park told IndieWire over Zoom via translator. “What school do you think they would have attended, or what kind of costume do you think they would have worn?”
Every detail, from the broad concept to the level of a character’s nose or ears, was discussed, and informed by Danny Glicker’s costuming and prosthetic designer Vincent Van Dyke.
“Right before we kicked into production, we went to Vincent’s studio, and he had a series of clay busts in front of us,” Park recalled. “As Robert and I would throw out these ideas, on the spot he would carve out or put more clay onto these busts. It was very exciting moment to me; I distinctly remember that moment.”
As he continued to write and map out the rest of the series, Park came back to the scene at the end of Episode 3, “Love It or Leave It,” when the Captain (Hoa Xuande) meets with all four of these key American figures in his life at a restaurant. The camera pans between Downey’s characters as they sit at a round table, cutting back to the Captain as he soaks it all in, these homogenous, powerful figures who hold his fate in his hands while he too could betray them at any moment. Even as they share the table, the men are often in their own worlds, embodying American arrogance (and later, debauchery).
“That’s actually the moment where I thought about having one guy or one actor play these multiple characters,” Park said. “When I thought about adapting this original novel, and when I thought about this steakhouse moment particularly, that is actually the moment that I thought, ‘Well, these guys are actually one and the same.’ I felt like that was actually our original novelist’s intention, whether or not he had intended to do that, or whether he did that without knowing. These four faces are actually one and the same, representing the big idea of America.”
“The Sympathizer” airs Sundays on HBO.
