“I actually have to show you something real quick,” Fred Nguyen Khan tells me as we connect over Zoom on a traditionally gloomy Wednesday afternoon in London, and a freezing morning in Montreal, Canada. A weather-related conversation starter in a quintessentially British way. “It’s snowing, all of a sudden, randomly,” he holds his laptop pointed at the window as I see the all-white landscape. But inside his home, an excitement that feels weather-proof takes over the room as we sit down to discuss his newest project, HBO’s new series The Sympathizer, releasing its third episode today.

Adapted from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, The Sympathizer is a story set in the last leg of the Vietnam War, a time in history that feels particularly close to home to Nguyen Khan, who grew up in Montreal as a first generation Canadian from a family of Vietnamese immigrants. On screen, he’s stepping into the shoes of Bon, a layered, raw, and emotionally drenched role that, despite being challenging, feels like a meant-to-be match.

“In January 2022, I was stuck at home because I caught COVID, and my friend lent me The Sympathizer book, before any castings and auditions, and I started reading it. And halfway through the book, I got the first audition call from my agent, which was such a serendipitous moment for me,” he remembers. “And then I started reading it really fast just to see what happens to the character, and, ironically, Bon was my favourite character.”

Having a background in stunt work, he recalls connecting immediately with his character’s feisty personality — and the possibility of getting to explore his martial art skills, a craft he holds dear to his heart and that makes up a huge part of not only his passions but also personality and connection with his roots. “He gets into a lot of bar fights and does a lot of physical things, which as a performer, I was really drawn to,” he says. “But also from the narrative part. He’s one of the characters that suffers the most throughout the whole book. He loses so much, and he reminded me a lot of someone that could have been in my family, like one of my uncles. Some of them went through the war and the refugee camps. So I really saw a lot of, weirdly, myself in the character, even though I went through none of that myself. But just by the stories that my family would tell me and just relating to that.”

I wonder, then, how connected he was with his ancestors’ story whilst growing up, and how much of their experience helped him shape the performance we now witness on screen. “I had to ask a lot of questions once I got the role,” he remembers. “My family, and I think a lot of the generation that went through the boats and the refugee camps, they don’t like to talk about the traumas that much. They like to bottle it in, as, you know, they had no way to know that it would affect their mental health at the time. And I think they were more focused on just restarting their lives and providing for the family and just surviving. So they don’t like to talk about it. And I even had hesitations bringing it up to them because I was afraid it would trigger some trauma that was still there.”

But once shootings were finished, he felt like it was time to genuinely dive deep. “And I can see that they were very happy about being able to talk about these things,” he says. “My grandmother sat us all down and finally told us the story about how the family escaped from Vietnam. And it was a very surreal experience.” The Sympathizer was also the first time he got to act in his native tongue, an experience he describes as not only bonding to his own roots but a self-discovery journey of realising how much admiration he has for his culture.

“Being exposed to Vietnamese media during my childhood, all I would see were variety shows or very over-the-top acting for comedy skits. So I never thought that the Vietnamese language was cinematic until I went on set,” he recalls. “Meeting all these amazing actors who performed in such grounded ways, and making friends for life, felt like a really huge family reunion. Just being able to talk nonsense in Vietnamese with fellow cast members is something I didn’t know I was missing until I had it. Now that I’m in Montreal again, I want to find this community, and I really appreciate the culture more than I realised I needed.”

On screen, Nguyen Khan is a tour de force of performance, delivering big-league-worth chemistry with fellow “Blood Brothers” Man (Duy Nguyen) and Captain (Hoa Xuande), on a tale of brotherhood, chosen family, and the power of friendship to endure challenges. But such a connection might not only be due to the important nature of their character’s proximity. “Duy is actually also from Montreal, and he was one of my closest friends even before I got the role. It was such a miracle that we were both able to be part of this,” he remembers. “He actually helped me with my first audition. At this point, he had not auditioned for Man’s role, and he was so excited just to have a Vietnamese project and to live through this journey from my point of view. There was no way we could have imagined both of us being on this show.”

At the same time that he found a piece of home on set, working alongside his best friend, he also got to experience what it is to watch some of your biggest inspirations in the field in action, sharing screen time with industry giants Sandra Oh and Robert Downey Jr. “It was a surreal experience. [Robert Downey Jr.] was just so friendly and approachable, and he’s such a natural when it comes to acting. I never actually asked him for any acting advice or anything, but just watching him being so free, asking questions when he needed to know the answers, and approaching scenes…” he remembers.

“Sometimes, when you’re new, you feel intimidated to ask questions. You just do what you’re told to, basically. But watching him work really freed up the possibilities of, ‘Well, just do what you feel at the moment, and if the director has notes, he’ll give it to you. But don’t keep ideas to yourself; you might be sitting on an amazing idea everyone would love to see, but you’re too shy to do it.’ Watching him do it really opened up that possibility for me.”

As for the Grey’s Anatomy icon, well… “[Oh was] already a Canadian legend for me,” he laughs. “She is just the warmest, most generous person. She’s an advocate for us newcomers without us even knowing about it. She’ll stand up for us behind the scenes, and she doesn’t take credit for it; she just does it.”

Nguyen Khan’s earliest days in arts were marked by a passion for dancing. So, naturally, Bon’s character preparation had to be tunes-infused. “I love just listening to music to get into whatever mood I need to be in. Whenever I listen to music, it affects the way I walk or sit, and my body language. So a lot of the time, I would listen to a playlist that I made on Spotify called ‘Bon’s Vinyl Record Collection,’ where I selected songs that the character would listen to,” he tells me.

And what’s that exactly, one might wonder? “Well, it had to be era-appropriate. And there has to be a reason why he would pick these songs, if they brought up some memories,” he explains. “One of the songs in there, for example, I thought it would be the song that he and his wife would slow dance to. So sometimes he would listen to it when he’s sad, thinking about it. I would listen to that when I had to get emotional about moments where he would be missing his family. But there’s a whole list of different types of music in there that doesn’t always make sense for people outside of it — but for me, it works.” We’ll be needing that Spotify link, please.

The Sympathizer is out now, with episodes released weekly on Sky Atlantic.