‘The Sympathizer’: Inside the Robert Downey Jr. ‘Circus Act’ in Episode 3

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Sympathizer Season 1 Episode 3, “Love It or Leave It.”]

All four Robert Downey Jr. characters came out to play in the same scene The Sympathizer Episode 3, and director Park Chan-wook tells TV Insider it was a masterclass in acting to film it.

Viewers met the first two Downey characters, Claude and Professor Hammer, in The Sympathizer Episodes 1 and 2. Claude works for the CIA and has been training the Captain (Hoa Xuande) as his “protege” (he still hasn’t figured out that the Captain is a double agent with loyalty to the Northern Vietnamese cause). Hammer was the Captain’s professor during his brief stint in America. It’s through Hammer that the Captain meets his new lover, Sofia (Sandra Oh).

Downey’s third character was revealed earlier in Episode 3, “Love It or Leave It.” The politician Ned Godwin is nicknamed “Napalm Ned” and is sympathetic to the Southern Vietnamese war efforts. These three characters, plus the fourth, joined the Captain for dinner near the end of the episode. It was during a dinner with Claude, Hammer, Ned, and Hollywood director Nicos Damianos (also known as the Auteur) that the Captain received his next assignment. He would work on an Apocalypse Now-style film about the Vietnam War called The Hamlet, directed by Nicos, who immediately insults the Captain upon introduction.

Sitting at a circular booth, the camera quickly pans around the circle to show off the four characters, each wildly different from the next. Godwin says that Hammer, a white professor of Asian studies, inspired Nicos to make this movie. Godwin has been asked to provide military equipment like trucks and tanks so the film looks authentic. The Captain has been hired to be Nicos to assure “its cultural integrity” as a Vietnamese cultural consultant. Once they sealed the movie deal, the four RDJs and the Captain partied. Chan-wook says it was a “circus act” to watch on set.

Robert Downey Jr. as Ned Godwin and Professor Hammer in The Sympathizer Episode 3 (HBO)

“It’s a showcase of acting. I felt like I was watching a circus act. That is to say, rather than me really directing this scene, I was able to sit back and enjoy this performance,” the Oldboy director says of Downey.

Related

'The Sympathizer' Boss Explains That Change From the Book

The Oscar winner would make each take very different from the next with each character to make sure there was a wide variety of chaos to choose from. “And 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,” says Chan-wook. This gave the director a lot of footage to edit, but it wasn’t a bad problem to have.

“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,” he says. There came a point when he needed to stop himself from editing further.

“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,” Chan-wook explains. “So only bad thing about that would be, it would result in much more time that we would need.”

In terms of how they actually filmed all four characters at the same table, they would focus on one Downey character at a time and used stand-ins for the other characters. VFX helped composite them all together in post-production.

Nicos plays a major role in The Sympathizer Episode 4, which will see the Captain on set of The Hamlet. Expect thrilling guest stars and a meta look at Hollywood in this episode that’s not to be missed.

The Sympathizer, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO