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Unpacking Robert Downey Jr.'s four roles in The Sympathizer

"The Sympathizer" producers and creative team break down Robert Downey Jr.'s four roles on the HBO limited series

When Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook were developing HBO’s adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer,” the pair came up with the idea early on of having one actor play four different characters who challenge The Captain (Hoa Xuande) throughout the course of the series. But I do know coming off of portraying Lewis in Oppenheimer with Chris Nolan, having to play a real person who was incredibly complicated and dimensionalized, he was like a coiled spring just ready to launch. [‘The Sympathizer”] enabled him to jump into these four characters that were all meant to be far more heightened, because they’re all through the perception of the Captain and his point of view, of these pillars of the American patriarchy in all its glorious ugliness.

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