[Editor’s note: Spoilers for “The Sympathizer” below.]
Turns on the market was an excellent purpose for Robert Downey Jr. taking part in a number of roles in A24/HBO‘s “The Sympathizer,” which is revealed within the Episode 7 finale (“Endings Are Laborious, Aren’t They?). That’s when the versatile actor turns up in a shocking cameo because the Captain’s (Hoa Xuan Nguyen) father — a French Catholic priest, donning a protracted darkish beard — and we study that his different 4 character turns are poisonous manifestations of the patriarch who disavowed him.
In actual fact, it’s a revelation to the Captain as effectively when all of them mix collectively in his thoughts as troubling paternal figures throughout a traumatic flashback. There’s Claude, the pop music-loving CIA operative; Hammer, the homosexual East Asian research professor; Ned Godwin, the navy vet-turned-congressman; and Niko, the counter-culture movie director. All of them contribute in a surreal approach to the Captain’s id disaster as a North Vietnamese communist spy and South Vietnamese sympathizer.
It was revelatory as effectively for prosthetics designer Vincent Van Dyke (proprietor of VVDFX and an Emmy winner for “Star Trek: Picard”) when he lined up all 5 sculptures with hair and the beard on a desk within the entrance of his studio throughout a gathering with Park Chan-wook, Downey, and govt producers Susan Downey and Amanda Burrell. “From day one, all of those heads are being finished on the identical time, together with the daddy, so I had a really clear type of relationship between them,” Van Dyke informed IndieWire. “Subconsciously, for me, as I’m sculpting these seems or fascinated by them, they’ve a special emotion behind them.”
When it got here to the daddy, Downey was impressed by the portrait of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (“Crime and Punishment”) painted by Vasily Perov in 1872. He notably appreciated the beard. The oil portray grew to become one of many main references, together with two different Renaissance-era work that Van Dyke appreciated (“Portrait of a Bearded Man” and “Head Examine of a Bearded Man”), although they made the hair a lot darker.
In subsequent conferences with the make-up/hair crew, they determined that Downey ought to put on inexperienced contact lenses to match Nguyen because the Captain, have pale pores and skin, a big nostril, and a receding hairline totally different from Claude’s.
“It gave us a transparent, outlined picture [in clay], after which clearly he evolves as you undergo make-up checks and the iterations of coloring and his contact lenses being a little bit of a nod to the Captain,” Van Dyke added. “Now we will see why there’s a tie in there. There are all these little refined hints that I believe are actually pretty.”
“We have been making an attempt to create someone of French descent with a outstanding nostril with damaged capillaries to precise a consuming downside, and the thinning high and receding temples introduced that entire character collectively properly,” prosthetics make-up artist Michael Mekash (“Stranger Issues”) informed IndieWire.
“It was one other 60 minutes to try this one between the nostril, the form of failing of his pores and skin. After which additionally the applying of that beard [which was a makeup piece],” make-up FX artist Chris Burgoyne (“John Adams”) informed IndieWire. “Of all of the seems, I believe that was the one which [Downey] anticipated with essentially the most quantity of dread due to the beard.”
Certainly, for hair division head Katherine Kousakis (“Barry”), the applying of the beard was a supply of concern all through all the manufacturing. “It was such an enormous deal, Robert hated that beard,” she informed IndieWire. “He stored telling us, ‘Wait until that day, I’m going to be so depressing, so indignant.’”
Then, because the day of the shoot drew close to, Van Dyke mentioned to Kousakis that they need to lighten the temper by dressing up as monks because the 4 of them entered the trailer to greet Downey. “So Vincent sparked an concept, and I informed him we have been going to do it,” she mentioned. “We’re going to mess with Robert. That will give him one of the best begin to his day.”
In order that they entered the trailer carrying hooded robes, carrying lit candles, and chanting, and Downey burst out laughing. “After which he recorded it, and I believe it was a superb stress breaker,” added Burgoyne. “He most likely forgot concerning the beard utterly after that.”