“Casting Director Jennifer Venditti’s Intuitive Touch in “The Sympathizer”
Casting director Jennifer Venditti had one of Hollywood’s great chameleons to work with when she was putting together the pieces for HBO’s limited series The Sympathizer. Robert Downey Jr. plays a quartet of characters in Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar’s adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as the Oscar-winning performer is in a constant swirl of dramatic action among performers less well-known but all of them entirely game.
Dressing a Spy in Plain Sight and Many Robert Downey Jrs. in “The Sympathizer”
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel “The Sympathizer” won the Pulitzer Prize and was subsequently adapted into a miniseries by showrunners Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, a historical black comedy now airing on HBO. The show follows the journey of the Captain (Hoa Xuande), a communist operative working as a mole in South Vietnam’s army who winds up fleeing to the U.S. alongside the General (Toan Le) he putatively works for. Ultimately landing in California, the Captain remains embedded in a South Vietnamese refugee community whom he monitors and reports on to the Viet Cong.
First “The Sympathizer” Trailer Reveals Robert Downey Jr.’s Twisty New HBO Series
HBO has revealed the official trailer for The Sympathizer, one of the most intriguing new series set to launch this year. The seven-episode limited series boasts a sensational cast and phenomenal source material—Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name—and the first trailer offers a taste of the globetrotting and subterfuge to come. It also bears the imprimatur of co-showrunner, executive producer, writer, and director Park Chan-wook, one of the best in the business.
