Michael Fassbender is back. After a recent four-year interruption (2020-2023) to strive for Formula 1 Le MansHe has returned to act with revenge.
2023 he played a perfectionist murder in David Finchers “The murder“(Netflix); An alcoholic football coach in Taika Waititi’s sports comedy “The next goal wins” (Searchlight); and took on his first television series since his early years, as a London CIA agent in love with Jodie Turner-Smith’s Sudanese professor I “The agency” (Paramount+/Showtime).
And this week opens his latest film in theaters, Steven Soderbergh’s “Black bag” (Focus), a rarity in today’s world: an original smart spy thriller for adults.
Fassbender specializes in late. In this witty British Whodunit is strangely written by Hollywood veteran David Koepp (“Jurassic Park”, “Spider-Man”, “Mission: Impossible”), the German-Irish Fassbendn is George Woodhouse, a star spy at Britain’s National Cyber Security Center another Star Spy, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett).
At the beginning of filmGeorge gets a list of five possible moles at his agency – his wife is on it. He tells her that he is tracking a traitor, but not that she is suspected. She’s in his ”Black bag“The place where secrets are hidden.
When Fassbender first read the script, “It was a fantastic collection of characters,” he said at Zoom. “And it falls into the movie Demographic that we just don’t see much of these days. That it would be done was exciting. It is difficult for film companies to support movies in that budget category, there are not many movies of $ 30 to $ 40 million anymore.
He continued, “When I started reading the script:” Wow, this is smart and fun. “And it was with a click. The rate I was driven forward by these characters was exciting. And we were in this spy genre: The story was not motivated by action sets, there was psychological warfare between these fascinating and exciting characters. There are a couple of visceral moments in the film that are quite violent.
At the beginning of the film, George invites his agency suspected for dinner, and all hell loosens. Fassbender loved playing the two midpoint dinner scenes, an initial, the other climatic, which were the only ones who repeated with the six actors (Fassbender, Blanchett, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris and Regé-Jean Page).
“Steven Soderbergh puts up a relaxed atmosphere on set,” Fassbender said. “It’s fun to see him come into a room, look around, light it, be DP (photographer director), run the camera, be the director and then go home and edit what we shot that day. We move quickly. He will drive 95 percent of the time. You always try to develop a report with the person behind the camera, because you will do a dance with them all the time. He has a lot of confidence in how he throws it. It is a choice that he does not disturb what the players bring. “
At the first dinner party, George is quiet behind his thick black glasses. “George does not show much feelings of any kind,” said Fassbender. “It was clear in the script, from the first scene when he meets (colleague spy) Meechram with the list of five names. David Koepp had written that it is difficult to read anything in George’s face, it is a standard for him. But it was a lot of fun to play it. We (the actors) never talked between each other about relationships at all. It was a lot of confidence in what the other person brought to the stage, and then you would answer accordingly. “
The dinner scenes were less a challenge for the six actors sitting around a table than the director. “For us it was an opportunity to be together in a scene,” Fassbender said. “You don’t have to find out any blockage. It was to find the rhythm between each other. “The rehearsal was to Soderbergh’s advantage. “He said the two scenes kept him up at night. This is where he would put the camera, the different angles he would find and keep those scenes dynamic, “the actor said. “If handled incorrectly, it can only be flat and lose the tension that is so necessary.”
The real tension in the film is between this happy married couple. Will George do what he says and remain loyal to his wife, no matter what? “Yes,” said Fassbender. “It is not to say that he would not fully investigate to see her obligation in this scenario. If she is one of the traitors on this list, he will still find out. Then he will find out what to do from there. He is a process -driven individual. He is analytical. He will gather all the evidence together before he makes any assumption and then takes the next step. But for me, his loyalty always put with his wife. It’s a lonely world. It is an isolating world. What is unique about the characters Kathryn and George: they have each other. None of the other characters have it. “
Marisa Abela (“Back to Black”) when younger agent Clarissa struggles to find a balanced life when she dates a medagent (Burke). “How are you going to meet someone outside The office? “Said Fassbender. “It’s impossible. She is the audience. She is the new person coming into this world. And I’ve always wondered what kind of person wants to become a spy or enter this world of espionage. Many people are driven by idealism and a real desire to help their country and patriotism. You can see through her that naivety and enthusiasm and idealism, and you can see the other characters that have done it for a while, the different levels of cynicism that come with it. ”
Fassbender has had a new exercise with its spy muscles. In “The Agency”, a new recording of Hit French series “Le Bureau” written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (“Edge of Tomorrow”, “Ford v. Ferrari”), he plays Martian, an undercover Cia Spy comes in from the cold to London. We see him adopt and throw various persons with his bosses (Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere), the internal shrinkage (Harriet Sansom Harris) and his lover Samia (Turner-Smith). With her open and show his face feelings, and when he leaves her is closed again.
“That’s the idea that spies are forgetful,” Fassbender said. “They would come into a room and leave it and you would never remember that person. So it tries to find a balance between not having it on the screen, so an audience forgets you, but remains faith in it and then find the moments where you can see the real man come through. Martian lies and tells the truth. He has lost the compass where the lie begins and ends. With his daughter Poppy he tells these insignificant lies. Why did he do that? There will be second nature, the idea that your resting place is so permeated in paranoia that you could never leave the paranoid itching alone, because you can die, it may be the end of you. “
He added, “I knew I could show some signs of man with Samia and Poppy. You get a look at how he may have been or how he is. But you never really know, because it can also be a performance for them too, consciously or consciously, because he has only lied for so long. ”
Wearing a TV series with ten episodes was an adjustment. “This was a definitely different experience,” Fassbender said, “just the volume of dialogue, the speed you are working on. You don’t have the luxury of the time you would do on a movie set. You have to make decisions quickly and go fast.”
The actor returns to the battle at the end of April when “The Agency” Season 2 starts shooting in London, Estonia and Egypt. Fassbender reads all scripts now. “‘The agency’ is a slow burn,” he said. “You have to lean in as an audience member and do some work, but then the payout comes through when it starts to fall up and the walls start to close. And the TW2O season, it just keeps tightening. It doesn’t let go. “
As if Fassbender did not have enough to do, he also joined the role of Scrappy Irish Film “Kneecap” 2023, Play an IRA officer and father of one of the rappers in the heart. In the beginning, it was far from clear that the film would be a small arthouse -hit for Sony Pictures Classics and be discontinued on the international feature film Oscar Shortlist.
“I loved what they did,” Fassbender said. “As soon as I saw their music videos and what they were about, I thought,“ These guys are the real business, and everything about them is genuine. There is nothing to strive for them. They are smart, they are fun and they have a contagious energy. They are born artists. They do exactly what to do in life. “”
After putting the four “x-men” and two “strange” movies in the back, Fassbender’s age is in an excellent physical form, but is less invested in action acting, “probably because I was younger and I could run around and bounce off the walls better than I can do today,” he said. “I’ve never had a fixed plan. I made a conscious decision to take a break. I made three, four films a year, sometimes. It was not through design. Sometimes you register for something and there is a delay. The next thing you know, three movies are back to back. But I wanted to get into racing and approach it seriously and give my time to it. And obviously it is impossible for me to make a racing season and film, only for insurance reasons alone. It was good for me to take a break and get some perspective and try something completely different. “
When Fassbender returned to act with David Fincher on “The Killer”, he credits his Formula One competition by helping him adapt to the director’s careful perfectionism and several days. “It’s a fraction, the work you do with him,” Fassbender said. “It’s as accurate as when you compete and you come back and look at the tasks and you analyze corners to corners:” Did I drop a tenth of a second here or three tenths? “So it was pretty good.”
(While Fassbender made most of the killer’s heartwarming yoga, “We had someone to make that leg in the back,” he said.)
He sees similarities to Fincher and Soderbergh, who are good friends. “They are directors who have worked in all different departments on a movie set,” Fassbender said. “They have a language for each department. They have a deep understanding of film history, but different ways to perform what they want. (Finchers) belief is that the distillation of making a scene a number of times is not only for performance, but for camera movements, for what happens in the frame. “
It is obvious that Fassbender, who has been married to co -actor Alicia Vikander since 2017, is in a happy place. “I’m glad I act again,” he said, “because I realize that’s the only thing I can do.”
Focus features release “Black Bag” in theaters on Friday 14 March.
