5.03.2024

They Call Us Bruce 239: They Call Us The Sympathizer

Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.


What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.

In this episode, we discuss the HBO original limited series The Sympathizer, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, with author Viet Thanh Nguyen and scholar Philip Nguyen, host of the official Sympathizer Podcast. They talk about the meta-upon-meta textual sandwich of adapting this modern classic into an epic television series, that time director Park Chan-wook came over to Viet's house -- hide the octopus! -- and the brilliant decision to cast the "dude playing a dude disguised as another dude" as alllll the white guys in The Sympathizer. BONUS: Keep listening to hear an episode of The Sympathizer Podcast with Robert Downey Jr., Hoa Xuande, Vincent Van Dyke, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Don McKellar.




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