Michael Fassbender goes into spy mode in new series ‘The Agency’

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Michael Fassbender has gone undercover many times as an actor. But if he was asked to try his hand at espionage in real life, he readily admits he’d be a disaster.

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“I would not be good,” the 47-year-old says with a sheepish grin in a video call from London. “ I think the stress would be too much. I’m too emotional a person to be able to navigate it correctly.”

Playing make-believe government agents operating in a shadowy world that he can leave behind when a director yells, “Cut!” is more his speed. “I can dive in and get little flavours of what these lives are without having to go the whole way,” Fassbender says chuckling.

In The Agency (his new Paramount+ series), Fassbender plays a covert CIA agent, code name Martian, who is ordered to terminate his mission in Ethiopia and return to London. As he reconnects with a daughter (India Fowler) he hasn’t seen in years, Martian’s life is turned upside down when his old love, Samia (Jodie Turner-Smith), reappears suddenly in his life just as another operative in Eastern Europe goes missing.

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He hasn’t done much TV since a 2001 role in Steven Spielberg’s Band of Brothers helped launch his career, but getting a chance to star in an espionage thriller that explores the sacrifice of covert work is exactly the type of work Fassbender relishes.

Fassbender has built up an acting resume that includes work in two Alien prequels, Prometheus and Covenant, a scene-stealing role as Lieutenant Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 war film Inglorious Basterds, the lead in a big screen adaptation of the popular video game franchise Assassin’s Creed, and a role as a methodical hitman in last year’s The Killer. Along the way, he’s also been nominated for two Academy Awards, the first for playing a vicious plantation owner in 2013’s 12 Years a Slave with the second coming for his portrayal of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in a 2016 biopic.

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A longtime fan of Eric Rochant’s The Bureau, the acclaimed French drama that inspired The Agency, Fassbender was immediately hooked after he read the scripts for the riveting 10-episode thriller, which are written by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Ford v Ferrari, Edge of Tomorrow).

“I’d seen the original series with Alicia (Vikander), my wife. We watched it in 2020 and loved it. I found the characters to be super interesting and I found the world, and the people that operate in that world and go into that line of work, to be fascinating,” he says.

Fassbender had no idea that there were talks of a remake, but when the project came to him early this year he leapt at the chance to star in the revamp. “I read the scripts and loved them and loved this new take on it … Jez Butterworth and John-Henry respected the original, but wrote it in their style with their flair,” he says.

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But The Agency expands its story beyond Martian and Samia as it follows a vast roster of secondary characters, including his handler, Naomi (played by Fassbender’s Steve Jobs and Alien: Covenant co-star Katherine Waterston), and Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright as Bosko and Henry, two London-based agents higher up the CIA’s chain of command with their own secrets.

Wright, who was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year for his work in American Fiction, says he was drawn to the series because he grew up in Washington, D.C. “surrounded by that culture.”

“There’s a lot to be explored in terms of what’s driving someone like Henry to do what he does,” Wright, 58, says. “At times there are these moral ambiguities and ethical issues that he crosses, but he’s trying to do the best he can. For himself and in service of his country … I wanted to explore that and to see where he succeeds and where he fails.”

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Even though Fassbender found himself getting sucked into the undercover life, he maintains he’s exactly where he wants to be — playing a part and never getting too attached.

“I just couldn’t make the sacrifice of not seeing my children and my wife. Maybe I could have done that type of work as a younger man,” he says thinking aloud. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I discovered acting at 17, 18. But before that, I was thinking, ‘What do I want to do?’ Journalism appealed to me. Being out in war zones or places in conflict to see what was going on there … but at this point in my life, I’m glad I got to do this instead.”

The first 2 episodes of The Agency hit Paramount+ on Nov. 29.

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