The Sympathizer would be a difficult story to adapt. The structure is complex. The cultural and historical subject matter is sensitive. The show is based on a novel written by a Vietnamese-American author, directed by a Korean director, and stars a cast from several different backgrounds speaking in different languages. What made you think, “Sure, we’re up for this challenge”?

Susan Downey: There’s always a combination of elements that go into us agreeing to produce a project. Because we’re so hands-on—and because nothing is easy, right?—it’s going to take a lot of our time. There are so many internal boxes that you need to tick, but once you do, it all happens very quickly.

By the time The Sympathizer came to us, there was an incredible novel that we were able to read a couple of times before even looking at the pilot and the breakdown for the rest of the season, which Viet wrote alongside [co-showrunner] Don McKellar. Director Park was already on board, so we understood that there was going to be a very specific vision. And the acting challenge for Robert was exciting; it was new ground for him. So it was all incredibly intriguing.

Amanda Burrell: I would say that the challenge, the risk of a project like this—that’s actually what drew us to it. There’s something so captivating about being inside the mind of the Captain [the main character of the story, a North Vietnamese spy]. And reading the book, we learned a very different version of the Vietnam War than what we were taught. It was really illuminating, and we felt like we had to get it out there to more people in every way we can, while also hoping we bring people back to the book. Because it was really the story that drew us.

SD: It really forced a perspective shift. Robert always says that he’s been in this industry a really long time and seen many, many people marginalized. This felt like an opportunity to find incredible talent within the Vietnamese community and center them in the story. That was an opportunity that we wanted to be a part of.

How do you balance your own hands-on approach with the approach of someone like Park Chan-wook, who has a singular vision, and collaborators like HBO and A24, which both have very exacting standards of their own?

AB: It’s a bit like a quickie marriage. You fall in love real quick, and then you have to hope that the collaboration works. But Director Park, as an auteur, is so deeply collaborative. There’s obviously a moment at the beginning of the relationship where he has to decide whether or not you understand his vision, but once he knows that you’re on the same page, he really invites everybody to the party—whether it was our costume designer or production designer, who had very strong points of view, or us as the producers.

SD: What I’ve found is that the more prolific, talented, or visionary a director is, the more collaborative they are. That’s because they’re confident in their vision and are therefore open to ideas that are going to enhance that vision. It doesn’t mean that they’re taking all of your ideas. But whether they’ve hired Robert for a particular reason or they’ve hired us a company for a particular reason, it’s because they know that we can add value. The situations where you don’t get that mutual respect, I feel that it’s because the director or writer or whoever isn’t as confident in their vision. They get scared. They can’t hear outside ideas because they’re just trying so hard to hold on to theirs. But if you work with someone who’s confident in what they want, it becomes much easier.

Were there any challenges in bringing this story to the screen that still stick with you?

SD: As producers, the goal is to understand your showrunner and your director’s vision first and foremost. So a lot of the time, when you bump up against obstacles, they’re usually about trying to clarify intentions. So for The Sympathizer, we’re reading scripts in English, Director Park is reading them in Korean. Then when you watch it onscreen, you’re dealing with multiple languages, told through an unconventional structure that uses a framing device and voiceovers, and—oh my gosh—all that became a real challenge in postproduction. We had to step back and make sure that the story was as clear to the audience as possible. You have to teach an audience how to watch the show. We’re going to jump back and forth in time; there might be a time jump within a time jump. Our main character, the Captain, is an unreliable narrator; we hear him describe an event while seeing the event play out in a way that doesn’t match. So for us, I think that was the biggest hurdle.

AB: You’re problem-solving every day, but there is an example that comes to mind for me. Director Park is an auteur—he’s used to having ownership over everything he shoots. But he was also a co-showrunner here, and when he decided he couldn’t direct every episode, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do the job as a showrunner, we had to find another director to step in. Episodes five, six, and seven [the finale] are really important, and they have to exist inside the same vision. It has to feel cohesive. So we did an extensive search and we found a great partner in Marc Munden, who directed those episodes. He totally understood the assignment. He was a massive fan of Director Park, which helped. So much of it was finding a director who was willing to step into the role in the wake of someone like Director Park, set aside their ego in that way, but also to be able to command everyone on set.

Downey and Burrell on the set of The Sympathizer in Thailand

Good thing there aren’t a lot of big egos in Hollywood!

AB: It helps that we very much have a “no assholes” policy.

SD: Robert really helps sets that tone. He wants any project to be a fun playground; no matter the subject matter or tone of what we’re filming on a particular day, he wants everyone to feel really good about it. And there isn’t room for ego in that.

He plays four different characters on this series. That’s a tall order! Susan—how do you know when to wear your wife hat and when to wear your producer hat in those high-stakes scenarios where real talk might be required?

SD: We’ve been doing this together for so long that I don’t know if there’s a wife hat versus a producer hat, but the relationship we have enables me to be very honest with him. I remember way back before we shot the first Sherlock, he had this terrible, porn-looking mustache that he was trying out in anticipation of playing Sherlock. And I was just looking at this thing, thinking, This is horrible. But I didn’t need to say anything right away. We weren’t shooting yet, we weren’t camera testing. So I was just waiting and waiting. Finally, when it seemed like he was not quite coming to that conclusion himself, I said, “Dude, he’s a master of disguise! You can’t have that mustache. It’s not going to work. Just let [costar Jude Law] have the mustache!” And his reaction was: “Oh, that’s a really good point.” So sometimes you have to let things kind of work themselves out.

When The Sympathizer came to us, Robert had just finished playing Lewis Strauss for Oppenheimer, which was by design a very controlled performance. So he was a coiled spring ready to launch, and he was excited to create all these characters and to have fun with it. He and Director Park knew they wanted to strike a more heightened tone with the characters, because of what each of them represents. They worked together in figuring out the look and voice of each of those characters. And I want Robert and his directors and showrunners to have that relationship. I’m not interested in being an extra person in the conversation, outside of what a normal producer would do. I’ll sit back, and if have an opinion, I’ll wait to voice it when asked, unless I really think someone’s going down the wrong track. One opinion I remember voicing, though, was when I saw their look for [the character of filmmaker Niko Damianos]. I said, “You know what? He needs to be sexier. This guy needs to be the sexiest of all of them—there has to be something very Hollywood and seductive and alluring about him.” And they liked that, because it was a woman’s point of view that they didn’t necessarily see.

So I know my lane, he knows his lane, and we both know when to engage with one another and when to step back. He’s a producer too, and he does take those responsibilities very seriously, but he also knows when something is better left to me and Amanda. After 20-plus years of doing this together, it all flows naturally.

AB: I would add that once he takes on a role, he takes his responsibility towards it very seriously. So when he was creating the characters—literally—with our prosthetics designer, Vincent Van Dyke, and Director Park, it’s just them in the room. We don’t enter that space. That is an artist talking to another artist. We don’t have to meddle in it.

Downey Jr. as Niko Damianos, a filmmaker whose character was modeled after Francis Ford Coppola in novel The Sympathizer.

Downey Jr. as the eccentric Professor Hammer, one of four characters he plays in The Sympathizer.

Mixing deeply personal and professional relationships has resulted in some great moviemaking duos. Director Christopher Nolan and his producing partner and wife, Emma Thomas, come to mind. What makes collaborations like that so successful?

SD: It’s completely a trust thing. And Robert has said it too, so it’s not something that I’m presuming. He knows I’m going to have his back. And sometimes having his back means disagreeing with him or voicing something that he’s not seeing clearly. But Robert came from a family of artists; he had a mother and a father who, until they separated, worked together. It’s just how he likes to operate. Team Downey as a whole—not just me and Robert—operates with a tremendous amount of trust. We all have kind of a familial vibe.

AB: I mean, I’ve been here for over 12 years!

SD: I think second to trust is a deep level of respect. I know that when he takes something on, he’s going to nail it, and I’m just excited to see what he does. To me, it’s like magic. I watch him onscreen and think, Holy cow, how did you pull that off? And even though what I do is less flashy, he has that same level of awe and respect for it.

Amanda—you went from producing indie films to working with Iron Man. Did you ever have misgivings about whether your visions align or what kind of partner Robert would be?

AB: You know, I’m not the kind of person who gets starstruck. I don’t know if it’s my New York sensibility or the way I was raised—even my mom, when she comes in and meets Robert, is just like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Then again, Robert comes in wearing sweatpants. He’s more interested in talking about you than talking about himself. So I was immediately comfortable with who he was.

Any misgivings I had were more about whether or not I would be able to do the job. When I started, I was at a place in my career where I think my taste exceeded my skills, you know? I come from the indie-film world. But here the budgets are not small. I’m no longer running and gunning. Now I’m in a conference room with marketing, and there are 25 people in the room! For me, there was initially a real intimidation factor. But once you get in there and see behind the curtain, you realize that everybody’s just trying to do their best.

Downey and Downey Jr. on the night of his Best Actor Oscar win in March

Susan, Robert has talked about how big a role you played as his wife and partner in helping him through his personal issues. Does that experience ever inform the way you work with actors as a producer—especially in finding empathy and understanding when an actor is being “difficult,” but is perhaps just struggling?

SD: I think it absolutely has, though not in a way that I could have ever orchestrated. As Amanda knows all too well, I love a complicated person.

AB: Oooh, yeah.

SD: I really do! Provided that they’re talented and willing to work hard, I can definitely take on some of the more difficult aspects of someone’s personality.

AB: And she doesn’t judge them. She very much meets them where they are.

SD: That’s exactly it. Amanda, you mentioned the outlook you got from your mom. That’s something I really got from my parents too. There was never judgment in our household. They were very progressive in the different folks that they befriended, who might have been outside of a certain “normal” box. I mean, think about this: 20 years ago, I bring Robert Downey Jr. home as my boyfriend. He was still—ay, ay, ay—going through it. And they never said a disparaging word. They never discouraged me. They trusted me; I didn’t have any history of bad choices. I think that helped me a lot.

So whether you’re talking about a tricky actor or director or writer, I just love people who are complicated and finding a way to work within that, to draw out what is great about the messiness of people. I think that if Robert had any other backstory, he wouldn’t be who he is today. So you can’t judge it; you have to embrace it. He has a phrase he’s used before about “hugging the cactus,” and that’s what you have to do. I really believe in that.

There have been occasions where I’ve come up against an issue with an actor and I’ll go home and talk to Robert about it. I’ll seek his perspective on what they’re going through, and use that to help make my way through those kinds of stickier situations.

The Sympathizer has generated a lot of excitement, and the novel it’s based on does have a sequel on shelves. Do you see a sequel in your futures, too?

SD: I think we’d be lying if we said we weren’t hoping for a second season in the future. But having done a number of projects with the potential for sequels, we know it’s foolish to look any further than rolling the first one out correctly. So right now, we’re just focused on The Sympathizer.

AB: And I think we’re just excited for what’s next. We know there’s another great challenge out there.

SD: We always say that if there isn’t a point where we look at each other and say, “Oh my God, what the fuck did we get ourselves into?” then it’s probably not a great project.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Nojan Aminosharei is the Entertainment Director of Men’s Health and the Special Projects Editor of Harper’s Bazaar. He was previously the Entertainment Director of Hearst Digital Media, and before that a Senior Editor at GQ. Raised in Vancouver, Canada, Nojan graduated from NYU with a master’s degree in magazine journalism. The late Elaine Stritch once told him, “What the fuck kind of name is Nojan? I’m 89 years old, I don’t have time for that shit.”