How does a biracial, bilingual spy—one unsure of his own loyalties and caught in the middle of a high-stakes international game of cat-and-mouse—survive threats from both sides? The new trailer for Max’s upcoming limited series The Sympathizer has just the guy to help: every version of Robert Downey Jr. you can think of.
Hoa Xuande is a spy trapped between nations in the newest look at Max’s upcoming series. It comes from co-showrunners and executive producers Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar. The Sympathizer follows a secret agent whose work begins in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He eventually moves to Los Angeles, but relocating to the US doesn’t make him any safer. It only pulls him deeper into danger. His fight to avoid detection will be hard for him, but a whole lot of fun for viewers. Here’s the show’s official logline, which confirms the humor in this trailer is quite intentional:
The Sympathizer is an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire about the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles, where he learns that his spying days aren’t over.
The show is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The series also stars Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Vy Le, Alan Trong, Vy Le, Ky Duyen, and the great Sandra Oh. Chan-wook directs the first three episodes. Fernando Meirelles handled episode four. And Marc Munden directs the final three episodes of the seven-episode show.
A24 and Rhombus Media also produced the series along with Moho Film and Cinetic Media. And Downey, under his Team Downey production company, also serves as a producer. That’s probably not why his character’s enormous costume budget got approved, but it definitely didn’t hurt.
The Sympathizer debuts on April 14.