Spy is the most dedicated employees. His line of work requires a total commitment, if not an active contempt for the very concept of a “personal life.” Certainly, “The Agency” by John-Henry Butterworth, a remake of the French series “Le Bureau des Légendes”, pushes its central character to question that agreement.
Michael Fassbender plays Martian, a spy of the CIA that remembered London after years of living deeply undercover in Ethiopia. Once a free agent is now limited by the rigid bureaucratic machinations of desk work and office policy, often facing him against his boss, Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright) and the head of the London station office, James “Bosko” Bradley (Richard Gere).
As intense geopolitical tensions bubble around them, in Belarus, Sudan and beyond, Marciano wonders what he could be willing to risk when his former lover, Samia Fatima Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith), reappears in his life. Stoico and aware of himself, the fassbender's Martian is a slippery figure whose feeling of I begins to unravel as the exciting first season of the program is displayed.
“It's really addicted to work juice,” Fassbender tells The Times, sitting between Gere and Wright. “That's where he gets his kicks. He has this love relationship that is the only real thing for him that will connect him with his humanity. But it is excellent in his work and is a bit addicted to that. That's where I asked myself:” Does Bosko strange be in the field? “
“Oh, yes,” says Gere, nodding. “He does. It was good in that. It was the mentality of the trench bar. Danger. Energy addiction and adrenaline.
The actor's work is to reveal, the spy to retain. That is why Gere pressed for Bosko to be even more a encryption than him on the page.
1. Michael Fassbender. 2. Richard Gere. 3. Jeffrey Wright. (Shayan Asgharnia / for times)
“I felt that I instinctively knew this guy,” says Gere, remembering his initial conversations with Joe Wright (“atone”, “darker time”), who directed the first two episodes of Paramount+ with the Showtime series. “We were not totally in the same wavelength of who this character was. I think I was raising a more unknowable and nuanced character than him. I even eliminated the mentions of my own homeland life, from my background history.
“It's here,” he says, pointing to his temples. “I know. And that is enough.”
As the agency fights to contain an increasingly volatile situation that involves an asset that is missing in the first line of the Russian war in Ukraine, the former field agents in London find that their favorite tactics can create friction in an office environment, where politics requires a touch that defines.
“For Martian, it's about being the sharp end of the stick and being out there,” says Fassbender. “And being your own boss. Martian has an ego. He has his own set of rules. He does everything in his own way.”
Henry, with tweed suits and Nebbishy glasses, feels more like a company man than his two colleagues. Jeffrey Wright, a “Emmy winner of” Angels in America “in 2004, channeled the world of Washington, DC, in which he grew up to create a portrait of an employee of the obedient government.
“I have great respect for federal employees, particularly more at a time when they are under such a serious and biased attack,” says Wright. “I think we combine, sometimes, our criticisms of the government with criticism that should level politicians. But I have much more respect for the people who are going to work every day to be part of the government than for many of the politicians who play theaters in the public eye.”
The London office, where much of the “agency” is carried out, captures the contradictions of this contemporary espionage drama. With wall to wall windows that question the city, recreated in the sound necklines with the use of giant LED screens, and a conference room with glass in the heart of the floor, the environment itself suggests the possibility of omnipresent surveillance.
Fassbender, Gere and Wright work in “The Agency”.
(Luke Varley/Paramount+ with Showtime)
The space reminds the spectators and characters equally how precarious and precarious it is privacy in this world. Such immersion helped the trio of actors to be lost in the high -risk work drama of “the agency”, where the secrets of the government and the transactional dynamics regan the daily operations.
“It must be argued that the only time you could have an artistic experience with a piece is through architecture,” says Wright, “walking through spaces where we are taking this design, but where we are not necessarily aware of it.
It is not difficult to see the parallels between what agents like Martian pass when they are deeply undercover and what the actors are called to do. He simply does not ask Fassbender to be ready for work.
“It's scary, pretending to do this,” says Fassbender. “I'm constantly thinking, 'Jesus, the reality is simply terrifying.' And it would be so bad about that.”
