Hoa Xuande has been waiting to get some good lines. And the Australian actor delivers plenty as the star of "The Sympathizer," HBO's seven-part adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's post-Vietnam War novel, a feast and feat of wordsmithery that earned him a Pulitzer.
"A line that comes to mind is: 'Wars never really die, they just hold their breath,'" Xuande tells me. "It encapsulates our inability as humans to forgive each other or move on sometimes. That we can all to a certain extent carry a war within ourselves, waiting for a chance to ignite again, which is the unfortunate nature of why we as humans still choose to fight each other over anything."
