The four stars of The Agency — Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright and Jodie Turner-Smith — were hesitant to spoil anything, just like their characters keep secrets and maintain their covers. As an executive producer, Fassbender had the authority to tease the upcoming second season.
“It just doesn’t let up in Season 2,” he said. “The walls just keep coming in, and the vice grip keeps getting tightened. That tension and that jeopardy just heightens all the way through without any let up in the second season.”
In the Paramount+ with Showtime series based on Le Bureau des Legendes, Fassbender plays Martian, a spy called back from his undercover assignment. That means the end of his marriage to Sami Zahir (Turner-Smith), who shows back up in his life. Gere plays Bosko, the superior to the agency characters, and Wright plays Henry Ogletree.
Fassbender said the show rewards viewers for following along the complex characters and their relationships. “For an audience, you’ve got to lean in a little bit, do a little work yourself,” he said. “They’re always the things I find most rewarding.”
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His co-stars have had a hand in developing their characters, too. Gere recalled vetoing some backstory about Bosko revealed in one episode script.
“One episode I was going to discuss my wife,” Gere said. “I talked to the writers: ‘He doesn’t have a wife. If he does, he’s not going to talk about it, and he’s not going to name her.’ This is unknowable stuff to him. I hope we keep it that way over the seasons.”
Wright said he was inspired by his mother and aunt who raised him in the Washington, D.C., area. His mother was a U.S. customs lawyer and aunt retired as Assistant Director of Nurses at D.C. General Hospital. He wants Ogletree to pay tribute to such government civil servants.
“I don’t want to generalize but for me, what this guy represented was someone who took his work seriously, who did, to the extent that he could, his work by the book,” Wright said. “My thought process in building this character, someone who is, yes, a bureaucrat but is doing it in service of something more than the bureaucracy and trying to go about his responsibilities with a degree of honor. That’s what I witnessed among those people. Again, not to generalize, but that’s how I was raised to understand it.”
Sami is the wild card outside the agency. Although she’s not a spy, Turner-Smith embraced the challenge of making her presence felt in scenes between other characters.
“For a lot of people, what motivates them is love,” she said. “So even when she’s not necessarily on screen, she’s still there. You can still see how she’s driving the continuously more frenetic actions of the incredible Michael Fassbender. A great actor is going to be telling a story that is making you think about these relationships even when that person is not on screen.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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