The Paramount+/Showtime Series “The Agency,” Produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov and Based on the French Series “Le Bureau des Légenes,” is a Classic Spy Thriller set in the London Office of the Central Intelligence Agency – a Flip Side of “Slit Hound of” Slit Horses. 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 that is better known as “Martian” which has been called back to the organization’s London office after several years of live undercover in Africa; Jeffrey Wright is Henry Ogletree, CIA London Deputy Station Manager; Richard Gere is James Bradley, London Station Chief who reports to the CIA’s 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 appears unexpectedly in London and forced him to hide his continued interest in her.
The spying gene is very popular on TV right now. What is the appeal?
Michael Fassbender: I think there is a lot of mystery around it. When you do things like this, you have access to a world that you are trying to represent. But for the most part, we don’t know what it is like. And the efforts are the highest they can be. It is an opportunity to look behind the curtain, and I think it is infinitely fascinating.
And I guess it feels at the right time when the world seems particularly chaotic.
Richard Gere: I talked to the authors about it. What is our agenda? I mean, what Trump does is challenging. What should we do and who will control us? Who are the adults in the house back in Washington and Langley? This should definitely be part of what we get involved in the show.
Jeffrey Wright: If you look at the end of Season 1, Martian who betrays the United States for the UK has even more multidimensional resonance now than it did when the show came out. There is an extra excitement that did not exist between the UK and the EU and the United States. The lonely takes up a completely different set of potential scenarios in the future. It is only the accelerated nature of change in the geopolitical landscape right now.
Jodie, were there special reasons why the show appealed to you? Your character is not in the building with these guys, but you really have a window into that world.
Jodie Turner-Smith: I like that I’m always in the room, even when I’m not there. I thought it was interesting to make that kind of impact. It’s not about how much screen time I have. It’s about how I get to look at this really incredible performance develops from Michael and this dynamic between these guys happens. I think it is very convincing, the story between Martian and Samia. It feels good to be that kind of very human part of all this.
Gere: She is probably the only example of purity in this.
Turner-Smith: Absolutely, yes. These guys are all cut.
Gere (To Fassbender): Actually, your daughter, Poppy (India Fowler) also has a similar purity.
Fassbender: Yes.
When they bring poppy to the CIA office to protect her, Martian is shocked and upset that she has been exposed to that side of his life.
Fassbender: It is one of the worst things he does. He makes her complicated for her own purposes. He has been quite absent in her life for six years, and then to come back, manipulate her and make her be part of this lie was really a clear sign that he is a sociopath.
All his relationships, both in his working life and his professional life, seem to be built on lies.
Fassbender: One of the lies that stood out for me most was the first scene with poppy (when she comes to the London apartment that the agency has prepared for him). She’s like, “Oh, where did you get the place?” And I am, “Some guy who lives in Cape Town owns it. I think he is a sculptor and artist.” It’s such a strange lie. It means nothing. Lies are only interwoven in his reality. It was an information about the character he is just (lying) unexplained.
The relationship between the three CIA agents has clearly been going on for decades, to the point where you three have a brevity that comes from things we do not know about. Michael, Jeffrey and Richard, did you work together to establish these relationships?
Wright: Between all of us there is history, and as I understand, we will come into it during the second season to increase the storage and the excitement that exists between Henry and Martian. But as far as trying to find out something together, no. It’s all in the script.
Gere: Yes, it is in the script.
Wright: And I think you just dig it out when you do it during the day. I think we could find it between each other and make similar assumptions about how they are relatively each other, only based on what we read on the page.
Turner-Smith: However, I think this is exceptional casting. The three of you, your scenes together are so interesting. And the excitement that you hold, the relationships, the weight, the game that is played is so interesting to look at.
Fassbender: Thanks. When you work with people who do their homework and who know what they are doing it is more interesting sometimes not to discuss things. To see what the person will take with you in the scene and be awake and alive and answer what they bring to the stage.
Wright: We realized pretty quickly that we worked with the same equation when we showed up in the morning. We talked through things and asked questions from each other and the director, anyone the director was on a given day. And we found that we were in the same universe. It doesn’t always happen that way, but we could mesh that way.
Gere: We all work pretty much the same way. It is surprising. It doesn’t always happen, safely. It may be someone who has a completely different way to approach the work, but we all worked quite a bit in the same way.
It feels like a show that trusts the audience by not providing as much exhibition as viewers can usually get.
Fassbender: The audience has to lean a little.
Wright: There is respect for the level of interest and knowledge from the audience. You know, this is not necessarily for the low propensity, the low-IQ selector. It is for people who are interested in the world around them and somewhat adapted. (Pauses) I used it more like the cutting of Steve Bannon, which uses that term “low-IQ voter.”
Fassbender (Laugh): This is the first time Bannon has been included in one of our interviews.
Wright: This is the first. But that is the phrase he uses for their target audience. You know, these things are not in a vacuum. And a certain level of awareness improves the experience safely.
A version of this story first appeared in the Drama issue of Thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the question here.
