The Paramount+/Showtime series “The Agency,” produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov and based on the French series “Le Bureau des Légendes,” is a classic spy thriller set in the London office of the Central Intelligence Agency — a flip side of “Slow Horses” where everybody’s very good at what they do, but the intrigue mounts, the global machinations get more complex and the fate of international relations hangs in the balance.
Michael Fassbender plays Brandon Colby, a top CIA operative better known as “Martian” who’s been summoned back to the organization’s London office after years of living undercover in Africa; Jeffrey Wright is Henry Ogletree, the CIA London Deputy Station Chief; Richard Gere is James Bradley, the London Station Chief who reports to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia; and Jodie Turner-Smith is Dr. Samia Fatima “Sami” Zahir, who was in a relationship with Martian when he was stationed in Africa and shows up unexpectedly in London, forcing him to hide his continuing interest in her.
The espionage genre is very popular on TV right now. What’s the appeal?
MICHAEL FASSBENDER: I think there’s a lot of mystery around it. When you’re doing stuff like this, you have access to a world that you’re trying to represent. But for the most part, we don’t know what it’s like. And the stakes are the highest they can be. It’s an opportunity to peek behind the curtain, and I think that’s endlessly fascinating.
And I suppose it feels timely when the world seems particularly chaotic.
RICHARD GERE: I talked to the writers about that. What is our agenda? I mean, what Trump is doing is challenging. What are we supposed to be doing, and who’s going to control us? Who are the adults in the house back in Washington and Langley? This definitely should be part of what we engage with on the show.
JEFFREY WRIGHT: If you look at the end of Season 1, Martian betraying the U.S. on behalf of the U.K. has even more multidimensional resonance now than it did when the show came out. There’s an additional tension that didn’t exist then between the U.K. and the United States, and the EU and the United States. That alone brings up a whole different set of potential scenarios going forward. It’s just the accelerated nature of change on the geopolitical landscape right now.
Jodie, were there particular reasons the show appealed to you? Your character’s not in the building with these guys, but you certainly have a window into that world.
JODIE TURNER-SMITH: I do like that I’m always in the room, even when I’m not there. I thought that was interesting, to make that kind of an impact. It’s not about how much screen time I have. It’s about the way that I get to watch this really incredible performance unfold from Michael and this dynamic between these guys happen. I think it’s very compelling, the story between Martian and Samia. It feels good to be the sort of very human element of all of this.
GERE: She’s probably the only example of purity in this.
TURNER-SMITH: Absolutely, yeah. These guys are all cutthroats.
GERE (To Fassbender): Actually, your daughter, Poppy (India Fowler), has a similar purity, too.
FASSBENDER: Yeah.
When they bring Poppy into the CIA office to protect her, Martian is shocked and upset that she has been exposed to that side of his life.
FASSBENDER: Well, it’s one of the most horrible things that he does. He makes her complicit for his own ends. He’s been pretty much absent in her life for six years, and then to come back, manipulate her and get her to be part of this lie was really a clinching sign that he is a sociopath.
All of his relationships, in both his work life and his professional life, appear to be built on lies.
FASSBENDER: One of the lies that stood out for me the most was the first scene with Poppy (when she comes to the London apartment the agency has prepared for him). She’s like, “Oh, where’d you get the place?” And I’m like, “Some guy who lives in Cape Town owns it. I think he’s a sculptor and artist.” That’s such a weird lie. It doesn’t mean anything. Lies are just interwoven in his reality. It was a piece of information about the character that he’s just [lying] indiscriminately.
The relationship between the three CIA agents has clearly been going on for decades, to the point where you three have a shorthand that comes from things we don’t know about. Michael, Jeffrey and Richard, did you work together to establish those relationships?
WRIGHT: Between all three of us there’s history, and as I understand, we’ll get into it in the second season to ramp up the betrayal and the tension that exists between Henry and Martian. But as far as trying to figure out something together, no. It’s all in the script.
GERE: Yeah, it’s in the script.
WRIGHT: And I think you just kind of dig it out as you go about it on the day. I think we were able to find that between one another and make similar assumptions about how they exist relative to one another, just based on what we read on the page.
TURNER-SMITH: I think this is exceptional casting, though. The three of you, your scenes together are so interesting. And the tension that you’re holding, the relationships, the weight, the game that’s being played is so interesting to watch.
FASSBENDER: Thank you. When you’re working with people who do their homework and who know what they’re doing, it’s more interesting sometimes not to discuss things. To see what the person’s going to bring you in the scene, and to be awake and alive and respond to what they bring to the scene.
WRIGHT: We understood pretty quickly that we were working on the same equation when we showed up in the morning. We talked through things and asked questions of one another and the director, whoever the director was on a given day. And we found that we were in the same universe. It doesn’t always happen like that, but we were able to mesh in that way.
GERE: We all work pretty much the same way. It’s surprising. That doesn’t always happen, for sure. It can be somebody who’s got a completely different way of approaching the work, but we all pretty much worked the same way.
It feels like a show that trusts the audience by not providing as much exposition as viewers might usually get.
FASSBENDER: The audience has got to lean in a little.
WRIGHT: There’s a respect for the level of interest and knowledge from the audience. You know, this is not necessarily for the low-propensity, low-IQ voter. It’s for people who are interested in the world around them and somewhat attuned. (Pauses) I used that more as disparagement of Steve Bannon, who uses that term “low-IQ voter.”
FASSBENDER (Laughs): This is the first time Bannon has been brought up in one of our interviews.
WRIGHT: This is the first. But that’s the phrase he uses for their target audience. You know, these things are not existing in a vacuum. And a certain level of awareness enhances the experience, for sure.
A version of this story first appeared in the Drama Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
The post ‘The Agency’ Stars on Why the Espionage Drama Feels Timely in the Trump Era appeared first on TheWrap.