'The Sympathizer's' Hoa Xuande on Landing Leading Role: 'I Felt Like I Won the Lottery'

It was nine months after he had sent in his audition tape for HBO's series "The Sympathizer"; he had gone through the gamut of Zoom calls, he'd met with director Park Chan-wook, he'd traveled to South Korea and even made some trips to Los Angeles as part of the audition process. But there was no word on whether he'd gotten the part — radio silence after readings and tests had to mean the worst. But on that fateful September morning, he learned that he'd be playing the Captain, starring in the series opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Sandra Oh. "I felt like I won the lottery," says Xuande. 

The series is based on Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The Captain is a spy for North Vietnam who comes to Los Angeles and finds himself with conflicted loyalties. 

Preparing for the role meant revisiting the book. He had started reading it while filming Netflix's "Cowboy BeBop" and had ideas about the Captain, but being on the set was different than thinking about the character. "Once you step on set with the departments and creatives, there are so many nuts and bolts and it took me a month to adjust, learn and to feel comfortable," he says. 

Xuande is of Vietnamese descent and can speak conversational Vietnamese, but with the show using a lot of Vietnamese dialogue, Xuande had to refine his language skills. He immersed himself in a two-week crash course. "I was surprised at how much [Vietnamese] we were able to speak," he says bonding with co-star Fred Nguyen Khan. "We hadn't spoken that much in our lives. On a personal level, it's nice to know that I can reconnect with a part of me that I hadn't fully accepted, understood and explored before." 

His first day on set was four days after shooting had started. It was a scene with Downey in one of his many guises — Downey plays several characters in the show. "He was playing Claude. Everyone was looking for him, but he was in his makeup, fully disguised and he appeared out of nowhere and says, 'Hey, it's me,'" Xuande says. "It was fun discovering his characters and his energies for each was so different. It felt like I was meeting four different people." 

As for Xuande and playing the Captain, he considers it a career and personal milestone. "It's so daunting, but I ran the marathon. I'm proud and happy," he says. 

Xuande's about to clock another milestone. 

He is being recognized by Gold House as the A1 New Gold honoree, which he is "honored" to be recognized "in any capacity by a community of people who look towards you, and are advancing the narrative of Asians in general," he says. "If I have an impact [that I] can at least raise the representation of Asians, then I feel like I've done service to a good cause."