Interview: Actor Hoa Xuande on Rediscovering Passion and Reconnecting to Language in ‘The Sympathizer’

I’m not sure if I’ve ever embarked on this type of tangent with talent before, at least during an interview. Then again, opportunities for me to cover of-Vietnamese-descent people in the industry have always been a rarity. In that sense, the Zoom session with actor Hoa Xuande was an anomaly, one that came to be because The Sympathizer novel got adapted for the screen.

At one point during our chat, we were guessing (or is it reinserting?) the diacritics above our names. We were switching between English and Vietnamese. I got his name as “Hoà” already; it was his turn to decipher mine:

“So, you’re Nguyễn Lê, huh?”

“No, it’s just Nguyên. Không có dấu ngã [There’s no tilde].”

“Chữ Nguyên không có dấu gì à? [There’s no tone mark above Nguyên?]”

“Dạ [Yes]. I only have the “hat,” but there’s no “wind” on top. Just a circumflex.”

“I think my cousin’s name is Nguyên Nguyễn!”

“That’s very interesting.”

In the HBO and A24’s series based on the Pulitzer-winning work from Viet Thanh Nguyen, Hoa Xuande plays the lead — a half-French, half-Vietnamese spy — tasked with a mission that sees him jumping between cultures and ideals. The series’ showrunners are Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, with Park in the director’s chair for the first three episodes.

On his last name, Xuande (or “anh Hoà,” which is what I, or someone who knows Vietnamese naming conventions, would refer him as), said: “I made my middle name, Xuân, my last name for the purposes of work, to be able to work, really, many years ago. I’ve just gone with that and stuck with it. Weirdly, “shawn-day” sounds even more natural for me to say now.”

Xuande: Also, I can never figure out the honorifics… Do I call you “anh” or “chú” or…? [Writer’s note: “anh” is “brother,” but older in age; “chú” is “uncle.”]

Nguyên Lê: I’m younger than you, so it should be “em” [also “brother,” but younger]. I’m meant to call you “anh Hòa.”

Hoa Xuande: I see.

Lê: Thank you for asking. Cảm ơn anh Hòa.

Xuande: Không sao em. [No worries, brother].

Lê: Back to business, how are we feeling about the show so far?

Xuande: I feel good… but I also don’t really know how to feel, to be honest [laughs]. It’s weird, I know. I’m trying to distance myself from it a bit so I can gain some objectivity, so I can watch people feed it back to me in their own way — see how they interpret it, how things impacted them.

I’ve seen the episodes a few times now and reading the reviews and people’s reactions to them have been a joy. It’s great just to see how people have been receiving them, and it has been pretty positive. I feel good about that.

Lê: I’m happy you’re happy. But it must have been surreal… Creating some distance between you as a performer and now you as a viewer seeing yourself performing.

Xuande: I guess that’s the thing. I guess every actor has their own process and their way of dealing with it. When I got into acting — and I’ve been doing it for a good 10 years now — I love that I get to express myself in a way I’ve never had before. Through a different character, through a different story. Or playing parts of people or even myself that I didn’t realize existed, or figuring out ways in which I can, you know, be something… or be something else. It’s almost like, freedom in living potentially what I feel like my true self. And when I do that, it feels great.

For the show, I was in it for six, nearly seven, months of pre-production and production. And then to finish on the last day, to step away from it, to realize that it’s all over… It’s like you enter a relationship, put every bit of you into it while knowing that it’s going to end, love it all throughout and then end it. So, watching everything again is strange for me because I can remember what it was like, but without the feelings at the time. I’m usually quite uncomfortable watching myself, but I want to watch myself for my work. I have to give myself enough distance to watch things objectively again. I’m still not there yet!

Lê: We are indeed our worst critic!

Xuande: Yes, especially when I watch my choices, my acting. But I have to step away, because it’s done, it can’t be changed. You always get to where you’ll look back and you find that you could have made better choices, but they were right at the time.

Lê: I’m a firm believer that there’s not really a “final draft,” and what you’ve put out there is only “the most polished first draft.”

Xuande: I love that. That is a very good way all artists should probably look at the work they have created.

Lê: This project is, of course, a leap for you, career-wise. But how did you and the acting bug get to meet?

Xuande: I’d say that I committed myself to it. For a vast part of my early years in life, or school, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I didn’t even know what “follow your passion” meant because I didn’t feel like I had one. I was hanging around with a group of friends who, through doing bar work, then got me to meet people in the theater/acting world.

I have always loved languages. Reading and writing. Then once I started to explore that a little bit more, I did amateur theater, took acting classes, this, that and the other. I started doing it more, and then I felt like, “This is the ‘passion’ everyone was talking about all the way through school.” I think it was probably one of the first times I felt passionate about something. Then, I was like, “I’m going to commit myself to this, hell or high water.”

Lê: This has to be your “grandest interaction” with the Vietnamese language, I bet.

Xuande: Yeah! I didn’t grow up speaking it, but I grew up around it through hearing it from my parents. I could always understand it, and I knew what they were saying to me — I just never spoke it. It was always a part of me, but I sort of refrained myself from using it because I felt like it’d only be a part of me when I needed it, you know? For this project, I didn’t start from zero, but I was first at this basic level and working my way to where I’d feel confident to speak it. I’ve never spoken this much Vietnamese in my life, let alone in six months or with strangers. Not even my parents had heard me speak Vietnamese this much! [laughs]

But the process gave me a sense of confidence and pride — I guess I found another side of me that I’ve been hiding for so long, so to speak. I have an appreciation for how much I’ve been able to retain to be able to communicate with my parents right now. I’m still speaking “half-and-half,” but I think they’ve been amazed at how comfortable I’d feel now, replying in Vietnamese and listening to myself speaking it. I wasn’t before. I’d always answer them in English.

I’m also very aware that my Vietnamese has been a bit diluted in its own way. But that’s obviously something that has been a part of me for, you know, my entire life. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m really happy I was given the opportunity to fully embrace and speak my language that has actually been a part of me.

Lê: Then again, I think it’d be fair to say Vietnamese isn’t the easiest language to learn. There are the tones…

Xuande: They’re hard! What are they… dấu ngã [tilde] or dấu hỏi [hook above] … those for me are so similar I can’t distinguish them sometimes.

And then, you know, if you’re người Bắc [Northern Vietnamese], you’d adhere more to grammar and tones. But if you’re người Nam [Southern Vietnamese], like ba mẹ của anh [my dad and mom], then you don’t do so as much. Now, my parents, they told me I have an accent from miền Tây [Western region]. I’ve grown up with my accent and not realizing that it is actually, you know, a dilution of the miền Tây one, which is already very… bastardized. You know what I’m saying? Now I could be wrong!

Lê: Ha!

Xuande: That’s right! Obviously, I’m not an expert, but someone who has grown up hearing enough to know the differences can’t necessarily always distinguish the differences either. I can’t imagine what foreigners might feel. It’d be so strange to them. When I try to explain to them, I’d say that the Northern Vietnamese accent is closest to, say, the Queen’s English while the Southern accent is more relaxed, or comfortable to speak.

I had a tutor teaching me, for two weeks, the basics of grammar, reading and writing. I used to say things like, for the word “gạo” [rice]… you have to hit that “g” sound more, it’s not “r.” I was so confused because for my entire life I was, “Ăn cơm tối nay có rạo không?” and I got, “No, it’s not an ‘r,’ pull away from that ‘r’” and I went, “Wait, what do you mean, I’ve been using this my whole life?!” It was really eye-opening to relearn my language. Properly.

Lê: I find The Captain’s interactions with the journalist Sonny (Alan Trong) the most interesting. I find that while Captain likes to stay cloaked to do things, here’s a guy whose job and purpose is to uncloak things…

Xuande: Firstly, as an actor, working with Alan, I felt like we had such a deep connection because of where we were in this industry and now, we’ve been given such a huge opportunity. When we first met in rehearsal and worked on scenes together, we just immediately clicked.

Our characters are interesting in the sense that Alan and I once said we were raised the same ways and believed in the same things… but we just approach our causes differently. The Captain chooses to sabotage and play politics from underneath whereas Sonny decides to tackle things head on and then allow the community to see it.

Lê: What are you doing next?

Xuande: I’m on a bit of a break! I’m still doing press for this and am excited to see how people will receive the series once all the episodes are available. But there are a few things I’m looking at, but in general, I would love the opportunity to tell the sequel of this novel. If not, I would love to tell stories similar to this, or at least those that will make people think afterward.

Lê: Cảm ơn anh Hòa! Thank you!

Xuande: Cảm ơn em. Lovely chatting with you.

Lê: By the way, if you are ever in town, let me know and I’ll take you around.

Xuande: I would love that. I would love to come back to Vietnam. Me and the cast, when we wrapped, we all took to Vietnam for a month. It was really fun, but also, on a cultural level, it felt like all the pieces came together. I would love to do that again.

Lê: I’ve talked to Fred Nguyen Khan and Duy Nguyễn [playing The Captain’s childhood friends, Bốn and Mẫn, respectively] and have promised that we’re going to be nhậu buddies when we meet.

Xuande: I may join you all!

The Sympathizer, also known as Cảm tình viên, is currently on Max with new episodes every Sunday.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.