THERE’S NOTHING PARTICULARLY new about Robert Downey Jr. going for it on screen. The reigning Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for his turn as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is still probably best known for his decade plus in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but make no mistake—the man knows how to make choices.
While Tony Stark is a fairly recognizable hero at this point, Downey has also played complex Hollywood royalty (Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin), troubled workaholics with a drinking problem (Paul Avery in Zodiac), and far-too-committed method actors (Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder). But none compare to what he’s done in The Sympathizer, HBO’s limited series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name.
Like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, Downey takes on multiple roles in The Sympathizer. We’re first introduced to the most important of them, a CIA agent with wiry red hair named Claude, in the very first scene of the show; he’s a constant presence in the life of our protagonist, The Captain, who himself is a double agent. In reality, The Captain is a Northern Vietnamese loyalist embedded as a key cog within the remnants of the Southern Vietnamese regime.
As the series continues, just about every American The Captain comes into contact with has something in common: they all look just like Claude (and are played by Robert Downey Jr.). This comes to a head at the end of the series’s third episode, “Love It or Leave It,” when The Captain follows Claude to a steakhouse dinner. There, the pair are joined by three other men—all played by Downey Jr.
It’s a trippy whirlwind of a scene, but one that isn’t just for Downey or the filmmakers to show off; it comes with a specific purpose.
“There’s this recurring motif in The Captain’s life—these patronizing American establishment characters who offer The Captain something, and offer to help him, and then end up betraying him or being duplicitous,” co-showrunner Don McKellar said during a roundtable interview that Consequence sat in on. “These extravagant archetypes of the American establishment, who all work together, have a common interest, are all members of the same club, like we show in Episode 3.”
To help you keep track of that strange club as The Sympathizer establishes it more and more throughout the course of its run, we’ve compiled a guide to each of Downey Jr.’s strange, often outrageous characters. Keep reading to dive in.
Claude
Clearly the most important of Downey Jr.’s characters in The Sympathizer is Claude, who works for the CIA and serves as The Captain’s de facto mentor. Of course, “mentor” is kind of a stretch; Claude operates under the belief that The Captain believes in what he says he believes in, and is who he says he is.
The reality is that The Captain hates just about everything Claude says, does, and believes in, and sees how duplicitous he is first hand—because Claude thinks he can really trust The Captain. Through his undercover dealings, our protagonist realizes just how disposable Claude, and by proxy, the United States, sees just about everyone around him to really be.
Nonetheless, The Captain and Claude have a well-established relationship, and following the evolution of it as the series moves through its seven episodes is one of its most compelling through lines.
Professor Hammer
Downey Jr.’s most outrageous character in The Sympathizer (which is really saying something) is Professor Hammer, an Orientalist grad school professor who speaks with an affect and constantly behaves in a way that’s both entirely inappropriate and culturally exploitative. We did not need to see Professor Hammer changing into his kimono in the side hall of his office, but we sure won’t forget it. On the bright side, though, at least The Captain’s interactions with Professor Hammer led him to meet his assistant, Sophia Mori (Sandra Oh), an intelligent, down-to-earth person who he’s both attracted to and can talk to about (almost) anything.
Congressman “Napalm Ned” Ned Godwin
The Captain meets Ned Godwin, a congressman from California known for his war-hawking efforts by the nickname of “Napalm Ned,” in “Love It or Leave It,” the third episode of The Sympathizer. Ned is a classic right-wing politician, flaunting his brash demeanor along with his veteran status (and scarred hands) as part of an attempt to appeal to the post-war Vietnamese population of his state.
Niko Damianos
Introduced for the first time during the Steakhouse dinner at the end of “Love It or Leave It,” Damianos is a cocky big-time American filmmaker about to make a movie called The Hamlet that touches on the Vietnam war. He’s there because The Captain has been recommended by the other Americans (again, all sharing Robert Downey Jr’s face.) to serve as Damianos’s consultant on the film.
As a hotshot, highly-acclaimed, sunglasses-wearing director helming a chaotic Vietnam war film in the ’70s, Damianos is of course based on Francis Ford Coppola. The legendary director’s time making his own Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, has been well-documented.
