| The Sympathizer | |
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| Based on | The Sympathizer byViet Thanh Nguyen |
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| Composer | Jo Yeong-wook |
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| No. of episodes | 7 |
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| Running time | 52-60 minutes |
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| Network | HBO |
| Release | April 14 (2024-04-14) – May 26, 2024 (2024-05-26) |
The Sympathizer (Vietnamese:Cảm tình viên) is ahistoricalblackcomedy-drama televisionminiseries based on the 2015Pulitzer Prize-winning novelof the same name byViet Thanh Nguyen.
The series was created by co-showrunnersPark Chan-wook andDon McKellar, with Park directing the first three episodes. The series premiered onHBO on April 14, 2024, and is produced byA24 andRhombus Media. The series received positive reviews from critics and audiences, with praise for its performances and direction, although there was some criticism for its pacing and inaccuracies with the Vietnamese accents. For his performance in the seriesRobert Downey Jr. was nominated forOutstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie at the76th Primetime Emmy Awards.
The series is based on the story of the Captain, aNorth Vietnamese spy serving in theSouth Vietnamese army. He is forced to flee to the United States with his general at the end of theVietnam War. While living within a community of South Vietnamese refugees in Southern California, he continues to secretly spy on the community and report back to the Communist Vietnamese government that took control of the country. He struggles between his original loyalties and his new life.[1]
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date | U.S. viewers (millions) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Death Wish" | Park Chan-wook | Park Chan-wook andDon McKellar | April 14, 2024 (2024-04-14) | 0.206[2] | |
In a North Vietnamese re-education camp, a man known as the Captain is coerced by soldiers into revealing his story. In 1975, before theFall of Saigon, the Captain is working as a South Vietnamese secret policeman, though he secretly passes information to the Communists through his friend and handler Man. The Captain meets CIA agent Claude and witnesses the torture of a woman with critical information alongside the General. As tensions rise two months later, Claude informs the Captain and General of the end of their partnership and the need to destroy incriminating documents, promising two planes for their evacuation underOperation Frequent Wind, though they know Claude will only have one plane. The Captain, urged by Man, decides to leave for the U.S., intending to rescue his friend Bon and his family as well. However, as bombs fall and chaos erupts at the airfield, the Captain's attempts to save Bon and his family end in tragedy, with Bon's wife and child killed while the Captain reflects on his failure to protect them. | ||||||
| 2 | "Good Little Asian" | Park Chan-wook | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar andNaomi Iizuka | April 21, 2024 (2024-04-21) | 0.147[3] | |
In a North Vietnamese re-education camp, the Captain's confession continues. He and Bon escape Saigon with the bodies of Bon’s wife and baby, eventually reaching Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. The Captain writes to Man in Hanoi while enduring poor conditions. The General struggles to maintain peace among the refugees and is often humiliated. The Captain and Bon move to Los Angeles with sponsorship from Professor Hammer, where the Captain becomes infatuated with Hammer's secretary, Sofia, and starts a relationship with her. Later, the General relocates to Los Angeles with his family, opening a liquor store to gain trust within the South Vietnamese community. He confides in the Captain about a potential mole in his squad, causing concern. The Captain and Claude laugh off rumors that the Captain might be the mole. Claude explains he delayed the General's rescue to make the Captain appreciate his new life in America. The Captain faces tension with Bon, who has become withdrawn and drinks heavily. The Captain decides to frame Major Oanh as the mole, and Bon offers to assist him in killing Oanh. | ||||||
| 3 | "Love It or Leave It" | Park Chan-wook | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar andMark Richard | April 28, 2024 (2024-04-28) | 0.081[3] | |
The Captain and Bon visit the General to discuss the plot against Major Oanh, but the General insists on proceeding with the assignment. On the way home, Bon offers to help rob Oanh to divert suspicion from the Captain and reveals his involvement in the Phoenix Program. They sneak into Oanh’s house but are caught by his family, who mistake them for visitors. They realize Oanh has grown fond of America. At an event, the General reiterates that Oanh must be eliminated. During the Fourth of July fireworks, the Captain sneaks into Oanh’s apartment under the guise of delivering a durian. When his gun is exposed, he forces Oanh to a corner and shoots him in the stomach. Bon intervenes and beats Oanh until the Captain executes him. The Captain informs Claude of the murder, who reveals Oanh had suspected him as the mole but dismissed it. In a flashback, the Captain helps a resistance soldier die rather than confess. After Oanh’s funeral, Claude takes the Captain to meet with Godwin, Hammer, and filmmaker Niko Damianos, who wants the Captain’s involvement in a Vietnam War film. The script triggers memories and hallucinations of Oanh’s corpse for the Captain. | ||||||
| 4 | "Give Us Some Good Lines" | Fernando Meirelles | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar | May 5, 2024 (2024-05-05) | 0.070[3] | |
The Captain agrees to help filmmaker Nicos Damianos make his film culturally accurate and travels to the film's set, discovering midway through the drive that Lana, the General's rebellious daughter, has snuck into his trunk. Damianos pushes back on The Captain's suggestions to give the Vietnamese characters more lines, but he agrees to hire Vietnamese extras, including Bon. Lana develops a flirtatious relationship with Jamie Johnson, a pop singer playing one of the lead roles, and tries to expand her role as an extra. Ryan Glenn, another lead actor, becomes increasingly volatile on set as part of his "method acting." Damianos writes a scene where Lana's character, named after the Captain's mother, is raped by Glenn's character. When the Captain objects, Damianos fires him. The Captain intentionally disrupts the rape scene, angering Damianos and Lana. Damianos also ends the film by blowing up the entire village set, unbeknownst to the Captain, who is on set when the pyrotechnics are detonated. | ||||||
| 5 | "All for One" | Marc Munden | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar andMaegan Houang | May 12, 2024 (2024-05-12) | 0.058[3] | |
After being seriously injured by Damianos' pyrotechnics, the Captain experiences flashbacks to his childhood friendship with Bon and Mẫn. While recovering in the hospital, he manages to convince studio representatives to increase compensation for his injury. When he is released, he attempts to give the compensation money to Major Oanh's struggling family, but his widow announces she will give the money to the General, who is planning an invasion to take back Vietnam from the Communists. The General tells the Captain about his plan, which he is funding through his wife Madame's popular pho restaurant. The Captain visits Sofia, discovering that she has begun a relationship with Sonny, an investigative journalist for a Vietnamese-language newspaper and the Captain's rival from college. The Captain writes a coded message about the General's plot to Mẫn and anonymously sends photographs of the General's plans to Sonny. When Sonny publishes a story critical of the General's plot, the General expresses suspicion that Sonny may be a Communist agent. The General announces that he must accelerate his plan, showing the Captain the clandestine training grounds for his invasion force and revealing, to the Captain's horror, that Bon is leading the soldiers. | ||||||
| 6 | "The Oriental Mode of Destruction" | Marc Munden | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar and Anchuli Felicia King | May 19, 2024 (2024-05-19) | 0.062[3] | |
| 7 | "Endings Are Hard, Aren't They?" | Marc Munden | Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar | May 26, 2024 (2024-05-26) | 0.088[3] | |
According to author Viet Thanh Nguyen, he insisted that any show adapted from his novelThe Sympathizer be centered around Vietnamese people speakingVietnamese. In early meetings, producers were uneasy about this requirement, but after political unrests during the Trump administration, the murders ofGeorge Floyd in 2020 and ofsix Asian-American women in Atlanta in 2021, the tone shifted.[4]
In April 2021, Viet Thanh Nguyen announced that the novel had been optioned byA24 to be adapted into a television series withPark Chan-wook directing.Rhombus Media is also involved in the production.[1] In July,HBO ordered the series from A24, andRobert Downey Jr. joined the project in a producer and co-star role.[5] The state of California awarded the production over $17.4 million in tax credits ensuring significant production would take place in state.[6]Marc Munden andFernando Meirelles were also hired to direct some episodes of the series.[7]
In August 2025, co-showrunners Park Chan-wook andDon McKellar were expelled from theWriters Guild of America forstrikebreaking by writing for the miniseries during the2023 strike.[8]
Casting director Jennifer Venditti opened a worldwide casting call in order to find a main cast of Vietnamese descent, ultimately hiringHoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Vy Le, and Alan Trong.[9] Recurring roles forSandra Oh,Kieu Chinh, andNguyen Cao Ky Duyen were also announced in November 2022, and Downey was portraying several supporting antagonistic roles representing the American establishment.[10] In May 2023, Scott Ly andMarine Delterme joined the cast, in recurring roles.[11][12]
The majority of the cast and crew are of Vietnamese origin, and more than half of the dialogue is in Vietnamese in order to reflect the Vietnamese experience, including refugees in the United States.[13][14] Hoa Xuande had to take a crash course to improve his Vietnamese to prepare for the main role.[15]
The actor Phanxinê, who is 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 might receive. He has said that many friends discouraged him from participating.[16] 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."[17] Fred Nguyen Khan and Duy Nguyễn, who play the Captain's best friends, are also best friends in real life.[18]
Filming took place inLos Angeles andThailand.[9] The crew's numerous attempts to obtain permission to film in Vietnam were rebuffed by its government. The production used Thailand as a stand-in for Vietnamese scenes.[19]
Downey shaved his head for the series in order to save the time required to use a bald cap for each of the various characters he portrayed. A significant portion of Downey's performance was improvised.[20]
The series premiered onHBO and became available to stream onMax on April 14, 2024.[21]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 89% of 73 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Sympathizer does a solidly satisfying job of adapting its ambitious source material, conveying its core themes even as it occasionally struggles with its structure."[22] OnMetacritic, the series holds a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[23]
The series received much attention in the largeVietnamese American community in California. Younger viewers believe 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.[24]
In Vietnam, the government did not allow the series to be filmed locally, and the completed series was banned from being shown.[25] At the time of the series' premiere, no official Vietnamese translation ofThe Sympathizer novel (which was released in English in the US) had been published in the country.[26] A major publisher had bought the translation rights years earlier, shortly after the novel won thePulitzer Prize in the US.[27]
After the series premiered, many articles about its production that were previously published in major newspapers wereno longer accessible online, as if there was acensorship directive from the highest level or due toself-censorship, although unevenly applied.[26] An article in the state-run newspaperTuổi 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 theParty and the State". It 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."[25]Công an nhân dân, the official mouthpiece of theMinistry of Public Security, stated that the series has "distorted content", was created by "opposing elements", and that the release of the series so close toReunification Day was made "with negative intention, to distort the triumph of the people of Vietnam."[28]
