Tonight is the season finale for the The Sympathizer, an HBO television series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. This is without a doubt not only a historic achievement in Vietnamese American storytelling but it also marks the first time an all-Vietnamese loop group has ever been utilized in Hollywood. This article is dedicated to them.
For those unfamiliar with what ADR looping is, it is the art of vocal landscaping that you will take for granted as background noises in any given environment for a film or TV show. These artists provided voiceovers for all background characters to give life to the show’s environment.
Looping for The Sympathizer was rigorous as the actors needed to be fluent in not only English but Vietnamese, and fluent in not one but two Vietnamese dialects (Northern and Southern). They covered soldiers, prisoners, hospital staff/patients, police, restaurant workers/patrons, university students, every civilian imaginable — a majority which was improvised. Without further ado, here are The Sympathizer ADR looping actors!
Elyse Dinh (Loop Coordinator)
Jane Le
Cat Ly
Yvonne Truong-Weissman
Jamie Tran
Isabelle Du
Kane Lieu
Tom Dang
Dustin Vuong Nguyen
Vien Hong
Joseph Hieu
Jonathan Huynh-Mast
(All photos taken by Vien Hong)