#Why Robert Downey Jr. Plays Four Characters in ‘The Sympathizer’

Fresh off of his Oppenheimer Oscar win, Robert Downey Jr. is playing not just one new character but four in upcoming HBO series The Sympathizer.

The series is based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which is set at the end of the Vietnam war and follows an unnamed spy (played by Hoa Xuande) who flees to the United States, where he continues to gather intelligence and report back to the Viet Cong. In the show, Downey Jr. plays four different Americans who play a role in the spy’s (referred to as The Captain) journey: a CIA operative, a professor, a congressman and a movie director.

Park Chan-wook, who served as co-showrunner and directed several of the episodes, explained via a translator at the show’s Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday that “even though each of the characters from all of the four have different occupations and they might have different characteristics, in essence it was very important they were faces that represent America. So in order to convey this idea very clearly and directly, I came to the conclusion that I’d have one actor portray all these different characters so that audiences can understand clearly.”

Co-showrunner Don McKellar added that the choice made sense because “we wanted the characters to be different but not cartoonishly different from one another. We wanted to see the man underneath because that was kind of the point, that they’re all connected in some way,” and Downey was an easy choice because of his range as an actor.

Amanda Burrell, who was an executive producer on the show and serves as president of the star’s Team Downey production banner, said the company “really wanted to do something risky, and the risk scared us. How were these characters going to look? But if you aren’t a little scared I don’t think anything is worth doing so we kind of jumped off the bridge.” EP Niv Fichman also noted that Downey Jr. and the producers wanted to make sure the multi-character choice wasn’t “just a gimmick.”

“[Downey Jr.] challenged them, and I’m not going to reveal what they came up with to actually entrench that conceit into the actual character, but it’s revealed in episode seven,” Fichman continued. “So it’s not just a conceit, there’s something that’s very, very visceral and very important and emotionally connected to The Captain’s journey that Robert was the one who challenged them [on] and it’s the big reveal of the show.”

The producers have also spoken about how expertly Downey Jr. improvised during filming across his four characters, though McKellar admitted, “I think when people say [improv] there’s a sense that he just sort of ran roughshod but that’s definitely not true. I told him last night, ‘I’ve got to defend you there because people are saying you improvised the whole thing,’ but he definitely followed the script. And some of the craziest things that seemed like improvs were in fact scripted lines.”

Xuande, who landed the lead role after a worldwide casting search, added that Downey Jr.’s frequent improv “reminded me how to have fun. He would take a scene and he’d just take it in different directions as well, and I just think learning how to do that as an actor stepping onto a stage like this, you’ve just got to keep it fun and alive, and he reminded me of that.”

The Sympathizer, which also stars Sandra Oh, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Vy Le, Ky Duyen and Duy Nguyen, premieres Sunday on HBO and Max.