Noah Centineo had one shot to shock the audience of The Recruit Season 2 … and he did not miss.
Those who tuned in over the weekend to watch the new season of Centineo’s Netflix dramedy about a CIA lawyer who consistently finds himself in precarious situations know that he gives his all to this show. But in the case of the first episode of Season 2, “Y.N.A.H.Y.A.L.,” he doesn’t just give his all, he nearly shows us all.
**Spoilers ahead for Season 2 of The Recruit**
After a tumultuous first season ended with Owen Hendricks (Centineo) watching his asset, Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), die at the hands of her daughter Nichka (Maddie Hasson), Season 2 picked up with Owen begging for his life and ultimately being saved by his CIA team. He first got his ass handed to him by Nichka, a fully trained Russian assassin and operative, but he miraculously made it out.
Back at base, as he is cleaning himself up in the bathroom, Owen is interrupted not once but twice while in shades of the nude. The first time is by Dawn (Angel Parker), who makes Owen swear to mutual destruction as they each have compromising information on the other person. As she leaves, Owen thinks he is finally about to get the privacy he so desperately wants but is immediately interrupted — still nearly as naked as the day he was born — by Nichka, who crawled through an air vent in the neighboring restroom and heard Dawn and Owen’s deal.
“You are naked,” Nichka says as Owen attempts to cover up his very exposed body parts with the rolled-up sweatpants the agency laid out for him. He’s forced to talk with her, at least until he can get the sweatpants on and cover up enough to walk out into the hallway of a government facility. It’s at that moment that Centineo bares his body not only to show off his ripped status (six-pack and all!) but also to craft a hilarious scene. Maybe it was easy for him to say yes to it given the impeccable shape he is in, but we are not discounting the commitment it takes to pull off a scene like this.
The thing is, Centineo and the writers know what they are doing here. They have clearly seen people jokingly state that they cannot distinguish between The Night Agent and The Recruit and therefore wanted to give them no reason for confusion. This scene to me screams, “Try confusing us now, why don’t you.” Centineo exudes confidence and sexiness, and it feels effortless for an actor who has fought hard to be taken seriously.
There are so many reasons I cannot stop thinking about this scene. One reason is obvious and does not even need to be said out loud (“He’s hot,” she whispers), but the second big reason is that it tells me how comfortable he is as an actor, putting himself out there for the betterment of a project he cares deeply about. One quick look at his surprisingly sparse Instagram page will tell you that this is a passion project through and through. He has just 15 posts on his page and nearly half are devoted to promoting his hit show. He is proud and not afraid to admit it! Not to get too sentimental, but it does make me care more about a film or TV show when an actor is willing to really commit and back their words up with actions. Or abs-tions, in this case. (That pun doesn’t work nearly as well as I thought it would.)
I think we just need to recognize that Centineo might be one of those actors who was long placed in a box but deserves to break out of it. I’m always in favor of actors trying out new things — the point of acting is to become a new person, entirely — and I think he is showing time and time again that it’s something he takes seriously. In a weird way, his almost fully nude scene tells me just how much he cares about his show, his audience, and the career he has ahead.
Between his near-full frontal scene and his surprise-ish appearance in another Netflix project, XO, Kitty Season 2, he is really starting to carve out a name for himself as a man for the people. As anyone with a Netflix subscription and a pulse circa August 2018 can remember, Centineo starred as Peter Kavinsky opposite Lana Condor in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before adaptation. XO, Kitty — a spinoff of the To All the Boys franchise — stars Anna Cathcart as Kitty Song-Covey, the younger sister of Lara-Jean Covey (Condor). As it happens, both The Recruit Season 2 and XO, Kitty were shot in South Korea, making a cameo feasible for Centineo.
“[All The Boys producer and XO, Kitty exec producer] Matt Kaplan and one of my friends over at Netflix called me and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be shooting in South Korea the same time that we are. Would you be interested in coming back for XO, Kitty?’” Centineo told Deadline.
He added, “And I said, ‘Yeah, anything for Anna.’ I think Anna is just wonderful and hard working and super talented, just a professional, and she deserves the world.”
Thank goodness that he is a man for the fans!
The Recruit and XO, Kitty are both streaming on Netflix.
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