The Unbreakable Bond of Three Young Boys is Still Driving the Drama as THE SYMPATHIZER Concludes

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede It’s fascinating how the complex story being told on HBO’s THE SYMPATHIZER has become increasingly about the simple power of friendship. Set in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, the intense and emotional finale of THE SYMPATHIZER drops Sunday, May 26, only on Crave (where all six previous episodes are also available). While the show covers a lot of big-picture historical issues and events, it’s the pact of protection between three bullied young boys – who are now men – that has given the plot its emotional depth. The Captain (played by Hoa Xuande), Bốn (Fred Nguyen Khan), and Mẫn (Duy Nguyễn), have wound up on wildly divergent paths – or so it would seem. Examined more closely, their concern for one another, even when they’re an ocean apart, and sometimes at the expense of their own personal safety, is the one thing that can be counted on in THE SYMPATHIZER, in a world where everyone is being watched, and virtually nobody can be trusted. In a recent joint interview with Khan and Nguyễn at Bell Media headquarters in Toronto, they both expressed gratitude and satisfaction that the friendship aspect of THE SYMPATHIZER was being acknowledged. “I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Khan said. “This is actually one of the rare times we get to talk about this perspective of the motivations of these characters. So yeah, this is nice. For Bốn and Mẫn, and even for The Captain, he has his secret mission that he has to do. But literally every motivation, every decision that our characters make, is based on how it affects our blood brothers.” The brotherly coincidence for Khan and Nguyễn is that they were good friends prior to THE SYMPATHIZER. They both reside in Montréal, which is Khan’s home town, while Nguyễn is originally from Hanoi, Vietnam. “Duy actually was the reader for my first self-tape audition for the show,” Khan recalled. Nguyễn wasn’t cast until a couple of months into production, after another actor backed out. “I don’t know who he is, but I want to thank him,” Nguyễn said. Heading into their work on THE SYMPATHIZER, both Khan and Nguyễn admitted that they had limited knowledge of the Vietnam War era, and what each of them did know had been greatly influenced by where they grew up, and who raised them. “We have such different perspectives, because I was born and raised in Montréal – my family left Saigon during the war and landed in Montréal,” Khan said. “So my experience, my knowledge of that era, and that war, and that period in history, is through the perspective of my family, who were victims of the war, and they were just trying to survive. So that’s a very different perspective from someone like Duy, who was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, many years after the war.” Nguyễn agreed, and added, “the first time I heard someone mention the Vietnam War was when I moved to Canada. I would introduce myself, and say, ‘I’m Vietnamese,’ and they’d be like, ‘oh, the Vietnam War.’ That was my first time. In Vietnam we call it the American War, but we don’t talk about it. History is taught differently based on where you’re from. So in Vietnam, for my family, and everybody else around me there, they moved on. They did not have to carry the trauma of leaving the country. We never talked about who left the country, what happened to them, or why they left. That part of history was left behind.” Of course, who left the country, what happened to them, and why they left – as well as whether or not they ever went back – is at the heart of the drama in THE SYMPATHIZER. For Bốn, Mẫn, and The Captain, those life-changing questions are about to be answered. The term “best friends forever” may have become a cliché in many circles, but in THE SYMPATHIZER, it really means something very profound. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv