Xuande moved back to Sydney at 18 to pursue acting, paving a slow path to Hollywood. And his perseverance has paid off. Roles in Ronny Chieng: International Student and Top of the Lake: China Girl led to Cowboy Bebop and Last King of the Cross. Now, in The Sympathizer, Xuande is the toast of Hollywood.

Time magazine described his performance as “spectacular”. Collider said it was “outstanding”. Britain’s Radio Times called it “a remarkable performance from start to finish”. And the perception in Los Angeles is that Xuande is an actor with an extraordinary future ahead of him.

“I try hard not to [read reviews of performances] but I’m also very conscious of how this show is being received,” Xuande says. “So I’m reading the reviews. And look, I’m honestly just flabbergasted.

“I set out on the journey of being an actor to tell deep, meaningful, emotionally, thought-provoking stories,” he adds. “To have people receive my work ... in that way, it’s fulfilled everything that I could have hoped for in being an actor.

It’s also reassured his parents, who accompanied their son to the show’s Los Angeles premiere last week, and perhaps for the first time got a glimpse of the A-list star their son seems destined to become.

“I think it dawned on them,” Xuande says, smiling. “I’m sure they’re very proud of me and the show, and just to see that on their face, and to be able to take me seriously in this career, has been a bit of an I-told-you-so-moment for me.”

McKellar, who worked on the series with acclaimed director Park Chan-wook, says the series is told from Xuande’s character’s perspective, making the casting of the role crucial. McKellar knew they had to find an actor who could carry the entire series on his shoulders.

“It’s really his story from his perspective, so he was in every single day of the shoot, and [the actor playing him] had to be absorbing,” McKellar says. “The character sees himself as an American star of the ’70s. He sees himself as the leading man, sexy with the ladies and capable in any circumstance.”

“It was really crucial that Hoa had charisma,” McKellar adds. “And right from the beginning when we watched him, we thought, there’s something. [Director] Park Chan-wook wanted him to have a veiled side. That even when he’s at his most benign, there’s even possible darkness behind him.”

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Adapting the book was a challenge, McKellar says. “The book is great, and it’s always scary to adapt a good book,” McKellar says. “There’s the old Hitchcock adage that it’s better to make a great movie out of pulp fiction than the reverse, and I think that’s true generally. Historically, it’s true.

“This book is told in first person, but it’s not a wandering stream of conscious, it’s quite driven,” McKellar says. “It’s got a lot of incidents in it, and it’s also about multiple conflicting narratives.

“I felt that as long as we could capture that inventiveness and translate the style and the voice of the book, then we’d be faithful enough. Viet agreed right away there was a distinct voice in the book and that he didn’t want to be one of the writers.

“A room full of writers tearing apart your book, it would be very hard for anyone to take,” adds McKellar. “Writers don’t have that kind of perspective. But I kept him in the loop. And I will say, to his credit, he was never afraid of that process.”

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Finding humour in tragedy is a complex process. It is true that, at times, The Sympathizer is genuinely funny. It is equally true that other scenes, particularly those which tap the darkest aspects of the conflict, are genuinely heart-wrenching. The evacuation of Saigon, in particular, is tough to watch.

“That’s what was bracing to me about the book,” McKellar says. “The way it felt very brave in its satire, and satire can be easy and cheap in a way. But the book really, I felt, took tough targets and made fun across the board of both sides, all sides.

“We want that bravery in the comedy, the comic element in the face of horror because they can’t be separated. Wars are also truly absurd. And the best war literature and movies are about that absurd horror, the comic horror, almost because it’s too grotesque to take seriously. Capturing that tone was really key.”

The day itself, McKellar says, looms large in the history of both countries for different reasons. “It’s seen from both sides as either a day of victory or a day of shame, but certainly for America, it’s represented this humiliation they’d never seen on the television before,” McKellar says.

Though the story is technically period – it is set in the mid-1970s, in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon – the nature in which it deconstructs the discomfort inherent in modern American identity makes it unusually resonant. In one scene, the Captain observes: “I was fascinated and repulsed. That’s what it means to love America.”

“The thing with the Vietnam War is it did seem at the time to be a turning point in American foreign policy and Americans’ perception of themselves,” McKellar says. “There was talk about how it would change, but depressingly, war after war, the same lessons seemed to be taught.

“What I’m saying is, it seems very contemporary, but those lessons were there at the time too. It is almost like America just became more and more exaggerated. From [outside] looking at America, there is that fascination-repulsion. It is completely absorbing, even at its most horrifying.”

The dichotomy at the heart of the Captain – that he both hates and is enthralled by America – was pivotal. “This character who is Vietnamese, but completely obsessed with American culture and American lifestyle,” McKellar says. “Those contradictions were key. This show really is about those contradictions, and how we can’t avoid them, so we better learn to deal with them.”

The Sympathizer streams on Binge.

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