- 4/14/2025
'The Agency' stars Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright and Jodie Turner-Smith chat with THR's Seija Rankin to discuss making their spy thriller during a THR Frontrunners panel.
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00:00I suppose no one else's character here is a sociopath, certainly not yours.
00:05Yeah, Jeffrey, you said that. It's not good to have too many of them in the same room.
00:09Just one will do.
00:11Yeah, most, this is actually probably most to least.
00:14One is useful, two is complicated.
00:22So your character Martian has just returned from six years in the cold,
00:28I believe that's the term that we use.
00:30What was the, I guess, character brief would be the term?
00:33Because I believe you were the first person of this crew to sign on,
00:36and first person in general, right?
00:37That's what they told me, but they could have been lying.
00:40As everyone's lying, it seems.
00:43No, you know, it's a good question, because actually nobody really said,
00:47this is what this guy's about.
00:49I guess I sat down with Joe early on, and we talked about what it sort of all meant.
00:56But I was sort of, you know, as I was sort of looking at this guy,
00:59it was one of the consultants, actually, that I got in touch with.
01:04There was one guy that was our CIA sort of specialist that I talked to,
01:09but I was like always asking questions.
01:11I was like, you know, what is, you know, why do people get into this?
01:15Who would want this job?
01:17You know, and looking for kind of the dirt.
01:19And I found that gentleman was really nice, but very much like towing the company line.
01:26And then I talked to another guy who really helped me out.
01:31And, you know, the question for me was, is this guy a sociopath or not?
01:37And, you know, having the conversation with this gentleman who sort of, you know,
01:42again comes from this world, he was like, yeah, you know, let's go through the boxes,
01:47you know, tick the different boxes.
01:48And after a while I was like, yep, he ticks that one, that one too, that one.
01:53And then it really helped a lot because I was like, okay, this is the guy I'm dealing with.
01:58You know, now it's not to say that he's not trying in some ways to find sort of,
02:05you know, his soul or humanity.
02:07And I think, you know, that's, you know, the Samia character is there's a, you know,
02:10that's his savior, you know, his humanity is in that relationship with her.
02:17But he actually even says, you know, I think it's love.
02:19You know, it's, it's certainly haven't felt it for anyone else before.
02:22So knowing that this was the kind of character he was, but in search of that,
02:27then it made a lot of decisions easier for me.
02:30That makes sense.
02:31And clearer.
02:32I suppose no one else's character here is a sociopath.
02:35Certainly not yours.
02:37Yeah, Jeffrey, you said that.
02:38It's not good to have too many of them in the same room.
02:41It's like, just, just one will do.
02:43Yeah.
02:43Most, this is actually probably most to least.
02:46Two is complicated.
02:49Richard, we'll go to you next.
02:51These characters, there's a lot of like interiority going on with these,
02:55these folks.
02:55And when you work for the CIA, obviously there's a lot of moral,
03:02I don't want to say moral ambiguity, because that's assuming what you might say,
03:05but there's a question around like, what is everyone doing and why?
03:08And you're making these decisions.
03:09And I assume that you guys had to kind of figure out who these people were in
03:13order to maybe say yes to the role or to play them.
03:16But kind of what, what was it that you came to like learn and decide for
03:22yourself of who Bosco was?
03:26Well, I think I, I kind of intuitively felt the guy, but I wanted to,
03:31you know, I picked up a lot of books about the CIA, the history of it,
03:36where it came from.
03:37And I, being the boss, the daddy in this one,
03:41I wanted to feel that sense of history that he would be feeling.
03:46And what the original impulse was of the first guys,
03:51they were Ivy league guys who basically wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia.
03:56And so it was very romantic for them.
03:58And I think it's still in Bosco, a sense of romance about this.
04:03And I think he was out there himself, you know,
04:06and Joe and I were talking to director, um, first talk to me,
04:10I said, this only works for me.
04:12If it feels like this guy has,
04:14has a vast experience at this stuff and has blood on his own hands one way or
04:21another, uh, that he feels it, it's visceral to him.
04:25Um, and, um, I didn't want to play a guy who was just an organizational guy or was
04:31a political appointee, but it had to be someone who,
04:34who had been in the trenches and would deeply understand what these guys were
04:40going through, all of them, but especially him.
04:42Um, and want to understand that the challenges to his heart and his mind,
04:46uh, having this kind of a job and I could see the crisis he was in.
04:51What the fuck is wrong with you, Henry?
04:54Listen.
04:55Yeah.
04:56Ask me your brother-in-law.
04:58I'm a classified pop.
04:59By the name of Codename, you weren't even supposed to know.
05:02You didn't think that was going to come back?
05:04On the contrary, I hoped it would.
05:07Why?
05:09I wanted to know if he's exposed.
05:12He's a black guy.
05:13And a war zone.
05:14Nothing operational was shared.
05:15I knew nothing about Felix.
05:17All I had was a name.
05:17You want to know something?
05:24I believe you.
05:26You want to know why?
05:28And because I, Henry, am station chief,
05:30and even I don't know what Felix is,
05:33which means that Felix, dear boy,
05:38is the very, very heaviest of every, heavy shit,
05:42and nobody, you and I, no one, would ever mention it.
05:47That's it.
05:52Jeffrey, your character, deputy station chief,
05:57I don't, he's not been in the field, right?
06:00Oh, yeah, he has.
06:01He has been.
06:02He seems to me from watching the show,
06:04like he has, he maybe has the most emotional journey,
06:08and maybe it's because of, you know,
06:10his emotional and so far as like his decision-making around,
06:14he feels more conflicted to me about some of the decisions.
06:17And maybe it's just the way that you're able to act with your eyes
06:21or what have you.
06:22But what did you, like kind of what did you come to learn about Henry
06:27and like what was his approach to the job?
06:32Yeah, that's interesting.
06:33I mean, I think we're all conflicted.
06:35All of the characters are conflicted.
06:37Henry does have a tension, you know,
06:41that's pulling him between his work and his home life.
06:46That's true.
06:48But at the same time, I think that he seems like very much,
06:52you know, kind of riffing off what Richard said a bit,
06:55he's very much a company man.
06:57You know, he's a guy who I think, you know,
07:03treasures his own professionalism.
07:07And that was kind of important for me to focus on.
07:11I wanted to make sure that this guy was, you know, competent,
07:14that he's there, you know, not because somebody did him a favor.
07:19He's there because he's good at what he does.
07:21He takes it seriously.
07:23He's not a politician.
07:24He's a serious person relative to the government and governance.
07:30It's not a game for him, but it's a calling.
07:35And, you know, granted, you know, there's self-interest there.
07:38It's a steady job.
07:39It's all that.
07:40There's the adventure.
07:41But at the same time, I think there's a, you know,
07:44there's a through line of a sense of duty and a sense of responsibility
07:49and an appreciation for kind of the, you know,
07:54the larger or the largeness that is the responsibility of being in that position.
07:59So I looked at it in some ways as a kind of,
08:04and particularly within the context of what's going on right now.
08:07And I think there are moral ambiguities and ethical ambiguities associated with this.
08:12And I think the CIA does at times go about solving problems that it's caused.
08:17I think that's a larger kind of story about, you know, American foreign policy.
08:21But I think he's a guy, for me, through which I wanted to celebrate the civil servant,
08:29the federal employee, you know, who manages this institution that, you know,
08:37we call the United States government and provides stability and security for us
08:42and a lot of things that we sometimes take for granted.
08:45Yeah, I scribbled down a line, actually.
08:47I think it might be Richard's, that I thought was really interesting.
08:50The only, that this, you guys are the only branch of government that thinks in terms of decades.
08:55And I found that to be like a kind of comforting thing,
08:59that like you're, someone is playing the long game out there
09:01and someone's thinking of things, not to say that it like,
09:05to disregard the problems that are happening in the short term, but I think that just.
09:10Well, I mean, I think that luxury exists only for the bureaucrats in government
09:17because, you know, politicians, you know, in politics, political cycles are so quick,
09:21you know, two years, four years, you know, six years.
09:24So you can't think long-term.
09:25They can, but they don't.
09:27You know, they think in terms of self-sustenance, whereas, you know,
09:30the government has the ability to at least, you know, kind of compete,
09:35for example, with the Chinese or with, you know, other, you know, governmental systems
09:38that can afford to look decades ahead.
09:40But, yeah, certainly within, you know, this agency, it would probably be within their,
09:45you know, it would probably be the healthy thing, you know, within their own self-interest.
09:49Yeah.
09:50Not to be flitting around from one thing to another.
09:53But they do that too.
09:54But, yeah, they do have that luxury though, I think.
09:56Well, these are the guys who would be fired now.
09:59Right.
10:01Season two.
10:02No, it's the guys who have institutional memories.
10:06Season two, it'll be the three of us on a beach somewhere in Mexico.
10:17Jodi, so I want to know what you knew about your character when you signed on.
10:24And maybe you watched the French version to kind of get an idea of how the character
10:30and her storyline is like unfurled and revealed, right?
10:32Because it becomes a lot more complex as you go through the seasons.
10:36So kind of what did you know from the beginning and what?
10:39And if you said yes to just like kind of that very beginning part
10:42and then got a delicious surprise to everything else that comes next.
10:47I mean, yes.
10:48I said yes to the delicious beginning and it was like absolutely.
10:53It was just kind of ticked all the boxes.
10:56And then I got into the French show because I'm endlessly curious
11:02and I wanted to know, you know, I wanted to understand the world of the original
11:09and not in a way to sort of attach myself to it,
11:13but just to kind of get an idea of, you know, what it was that was inspiring this.
11:19And I was so blown away by the original, so it was kind of pleasant to go through it.
11:24And it's been, I love that because it's given me, it's been so interesting to see,
11:28you know, the ways in which we deviate or what we follow from the first one
11:31and, you know, the ways in which it becomes sort of powerfully altered
11:36to cater to primarily American audience, you know, versus the French original.
11:42So, you know, I think that, you know, Jez and John Henry are such incredible writers
11:49that even though they are sticking in many ways to the source material,
11:53it's still so much uniquely its own thing.
11:57So it's been interesting to just be on that journey.
12:00I'm still being surprised by the story and the ways in which it's different.
12:04But at the same time, sort of having a kind of an idea of like where things are generally going.
12:10And then again, to have an actor like Michael Vassbender take on this role.
12:15I mean, honestly, one of the greatest pleasures for me of this whole thing
12:18has been taking it in after because there's so much happening
12:22that I'm not actually even a part of, but I get to be a part of
12:26just by the way in which Michael is carrying me into Martian story,
12:31the way in which we're seeing this tangled web that he's weaving Titan around him.
12:37And so I get to just like be present even when I'm not present, which is so fun.
12:43But yeah, so...
12:45You filmed in Cairo, I want to say, for some of your...
12:48So yeah, you guys got some of the more interesting on-location scenes.
12:52But what was, I guess, what was the best part about kind of getting off campus,
12:57if you will, from the London set?
12:59I mean, I find it, I still find it to be so fun to get to go to an interesting location
13:05and not only film in a new city where you're going to experience many different things
13:12as just primarily even just a different culture,
13:14but also seeing how crews operate in different cities and like getting something done.
13:18But, you know, the madness and the beauty of a city like Cairo,
13:21I mean, that was really fun to run around Cairo and to do that.
13:25That was exciting.
13:26Obviously, everyone here is past any sort of like audition or chemistry test read,
13:33but did the two of...
13:34I still audition.
13:35I just want you guys to cry.
13:37Well, there's people...
13:38We're going to...
13:39These guys might not, but we've got some really heavy hitters.
13:42I'm still new to this.
13:44Get her email afterwards.
13:46To be clear.
13:47Bump you up to offer only.
13:49But did you...
13:49When was the first time you guys met and did you...
13:52Was there any sort of like thing that either of you were looking for in the other person
13:56to kind of know you'd be able to achieve what you needed to on screen?
14:00Are you like...
14:02Got it, right?
14:03No, there was a talk about us doing a chemistry read.
14:07Joe was like, I'm really, you know, into Jodie Turner-Smith.
14:11And I was like, great choice.
14:13And then it was like...
14:16I was like, we don't need to, you know, do a chemistry read.
14:20So it never really came up again.
14:22And then we just, you know, I think the first time...
14:26Well, we had a read-through, which was quite cool, actually.
14:28We did a read-through for the first two episodes.
14:32And that was kind of nice to do.
14:33I hadn't done that in a while.
14:35And so we'd met.
14:36But then, you know, we just sort of started filming.
14:40And luckily, you know, we got along, as it did all of us, actually.
14:43Which, you know, in hindsight, thank God.
14:46Because it's such an intense experience, you know, filming a show, 10 hours to do.
14:51But all of us, we were saying earlier, you know, actually Richard was saying,
14:53you know, we all kind of work the same way.
14:57You know, everybody just arrives having done their homework and brings it to the table.
15:00We don't discuss...
15:01It's not always like that.
15:04Nance and Nance.
15:04We kind of...
15:06Sometimes you adjust to how other people work.
15:10But that didn't happen here.
15:11I mean, really, just we all kind of vibrate the same way.
15:15And our approach to acting is very similar.
15:18So they just kind of flowed together.
15:20I know a lot of what you've talked about.
15:22Because people love to ask you, from what I've seen of press of this show,
15:25is like, what was it like doing TV first time in a long time, blah, blah, blah.
15:30Big movie star doing TV.
15:31And a lot of this show is a production like a film.
15:34Right?
15:35It's like film screenwriters, film director.
15:37Yeah, it was completely like a film.
15:39So my question is, is there anything about this?
15:41Actually, it's bigger than the last films I've been making.
15:43Okay, so yeah.
15:44What felt most different about this?
15:45I've been making very small independent films, which I love doing.
15:47But I hadn't seen...
15:48We were talking about it today.
15:49I hadn't seen...
15:51I don't think I've ever been on a soundstage that big.
15:53After all these years of me making studio films, never have I seen a set this big.
16:01I mean, he has, because he's done all the Bonds and all of that stuff.
16:05Somebody's got to do it.
16:06What do you want?
16:09We need a word.
16:12I've got the U.S. and Belarus ambassadors, and they're trying to avert a major diplomatic
16:17incident.
16:18We have an idea.
16:20There's a better than nothing.
16:20We lost an agent.
16:22Can we please get him back?
16:23Why are they here now?
16:25Because some bumfuck no-name congressman throws a little shade on Capitol Hill?
16:28Maybe they want to start a negotiation here.
16:33If they do have Coyote, they'll allude to it.
16:36They'll give us a sign.
16:37Open a back channel.
16:38It'll be masked.
16:39Subtext.
16:41We need to be in there.
16:43To spot the sign.
16:45Owen, check.
16:46Walk away.
16:47Check.
16:51Observers.
16:51Observers.
16:53Not a fucking word.
16:54Not a word.
16:55I mean it.
16:55The entire office is soundstage, or what?
17:01That was all built.
17:02That's all LED screens.
17:04Sarah Greenwood.
17:05This was everything you saw out the windows.
17:08That London was all on screens.
17:10Wow.
17:11Wow.
17:12Okay.
17:12My apartment as well.
17:13Yeah.
17:14You're not really at the Barbican.
17:17We did shoot, obviously, the outside.
17:18You know, when you have that long, wide shot, and it zooms in or out.
17:23I can't remember.
17:24That was obviously, we shot all of that at the Barbican, but then, you know, the whole
17:27apartment's recreated, and, you know, whenever you see nighttime outside, you know, that's
17:33all LED screens.
17:35Yeah.
17:35So beautiful.
17:36Yeah.
17:36A lot of our Samia and Demartian's rendezvous, we did that on locations.
17:41And a lot of, you know, I really think with the exception of our first scene, our breakup,
17:49mostly all of our stuff was on location in public.
17:54And we didn't have, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't get to fight on that bridge.
17:56Nothing was ever locked off.
17:58We always had just live people on the street.
18:01Sometimes a little worse scene.
18:02Sometimes room takes because someone's just like staring down the camera.
18:05Exactly.
18:06It's like, I was looking for people.
18:08We were, we, we got away with it.
18:09Because we shot a lot in live, you know, live London.
18:12It wasn't locked off.
18:14Did people start to kind of get hip to the fact that you were doing that in London and
18:17kind of looking for you around town, the sort of sex in the city?
18:20Nobody cares.
18:21Effect from that?
18:21Well, now that everyone knows what the show is, and for season two, when you guys go back
18:29in, I feel like if people will.
18:31You know, I think, you know, it's funny, like if you, if you have to sort of repeat something
18:35or you're going down, but I mean, you just, you know, we did have, you know, great sort
18:41of runners and people that were trying their best to sort of work around the crowd.
18:45But, you know, we're in Battersea Power Station, you know, which is like shopping center.
18:49And, you know, you're just sort of working with the crowd.
18:52I was like worried about it, but we, it was never there on screen either where people are
18:57like looking down the lens.
18:58We got lucky and we'll see what happens next.
19:01Belarus is a situation we're across.
19:03So far, nothing special.
19:07It's early days, but for now, we're seeing this very much as a local problem.
19:12Jim, we both know there's no such thing as a local problem in Belarus.
19:19Yeah, there's an unfolding situation in Minsk.
19:25Once we have a degree of clarity, we'll fold you in.
19:28You know about new domino theory?
19:31Yes, sir.
19:31Yes.
19:32Domino theory.
19:33I didn't ask about domino theory.
19:34I asked about new domino theory.
19:36New domino theory is that the United States exists three dominoes away from full nuclear
19:40exchange.
19:41As we speak, there are 7,000 nuclear weapons pointed at American targets.
19:45Minsk is a big fucking domino.
19:47Oh, yes, sir.
19:49The cast of this show is so stacked that even Dominic West has, you know, that's the level
19:58of people who are doing smaller roles on this show.
20:01Were you looking at blank screens whenever you're in the situation room or did they get
20:09that really up there too?
20:10That's all real.
20:11They're definitely there.
20:13Wow.
20:13Okay.
20:14Incredible.
20:14Because sometimes you see like the early cuts of things and it's just everything's
20:18green and you just have to pretend.
20:20But okay, you're doing it for real.
20:22Okay.
20:23No.
20:23And in fact, he was, you know, he was in another room.
20:26He was being filmed live the same time we were.
20:29Wow.
20:29I mean, how many cameras?
20:30Usually two, maybe three cameras sometimes that we were using.
20:35So I mean, all of that was live.
20:37There's no green screen there.
20:38And as well, the cinematographers were using a lot of reflection, you know, wanted to use
20:44them.
20:45In fact, we're shooting certain angles in the crisis room, shooting into the screen back
20:52at us.
20:53So shooting through the screen.
20:54And so the reflection was on us, but we were.
20:58That was the trickiest stuff, actually.
21:00That stuff looked great.
21:01It looked fabulous, but it wasn't easy.
21:05That can be very frustrating, getting the timing right between the reflections and what's going
21:10on screen and the moving cameras and moving, getting that stuff.
21:15Well, you shot the footage way before that's actually on the screen, but syncing everything
21:19up some days was pretty frustrating.
21:22I don't recall any green screen.
21:23I think for the directors, it was a hard room to shoot in.
21:25Yeah.
21:26You know, it was sort of like, oh, we're back in the crisis room.
21:28You know, there's only so many angles and how do you cover that room and not have it
21:33become, you know, repetitious.
21:35Did we use any green screen at all?
21:37No, no, no.
21:38Anything?
21:38No, everything was photographed.
21:40Yeah.
21:42Jody, I wanted to ask you about building the accent.
21:46Because that, yeah, just talk about kind of the training that went into that.
21:52And how you developed her, like, very specific accent.
21:55She's, you know, a woman of many, like, she's very worldly, you know.
22:01What went into that?
22:03Yeah, so, you know, in addition to our show, we had a Sudanese consultant, just in terms
22:12of making sure that we were hitting certain notes or understanding certain things culturally.
22:18But I had an amazing dialect coach in Khaled Abu Nama, who is a Rhodes scholar.
22:26He's so intelligent and amazing and incredible.
22:29And I'm really smart, too.
22:32So what's great is, you know, I've found that I feel like, you know, language.
22:41Well, first of all, you know, accent work is hard.
22:43It is.
22:43Because half of it is just confidence, really.
22:48And then there's the other bit, because, like, when you have a dialect as beautiful and incredible
22:54and hard as Arabic in that, because it contains sounds that we don't use in English, parts of
23:01your mouth and your throat and your vocal cords that you don't utilize.
23:06So it's like learning something new.
23:08But I do feel that it's something that perhaps it's a bit closer to than maybe some other people are.
23:19And I feel confident that I can do it.
23:22So, and, you know, I love to throw myself into things, and I threw myself into it.
23:27And, you know, even now we're doing Arabic lessons as well,
23:30because I think, and I'm grateful that I get another season,
23:34because that means I can even have a chance to do a better job and to go deeper into it.
23:41And with anything, I mean, I find that I'm often asked to do some kind of an accent,
23:46and always, or I have the privilege of playing a different culture or another, you know, community in the diaspora.
23:56And I find that that is something that I take with such, you know, I have a lot of seriousness with that,
24:03because I think it's important to honor whatever culture I've been, you know, allowed to play.
24:10I want to honor it as best as I can.
24:13I'm not always going to get it right, because it's not my mother tongue.
24:17I'm an actor.
24:17You know, I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, like my dialect coach.
24:23You pointed over here.
24:26Just go with it, Rhodes Scholar, Jeffrey.
24:28I could have been a contender, but not quite.
24:32Not quite.
24:33You know, it's my job to pretend.
24:34And, you know, the biggest, I think, part of the pretending is the belief, the sheer and utter belief.
24:44Like, you have to profoundly just wear something else.
24:48And when you do, even if, I mean, I think we've all watched something where the accent perhaps wasn't that great.
24:54Maybe we even had to, you know, focus a bit so it wouldn't take us out of it.
24:58But eventually we got lost because of how committed the actor was.
25:02And to me, I think that's the most important thing, because ultimately, you know, you're never going to get everything right, because it's not your mother tongue.
25:11And there's just certain, you know, I've been talking a lot today about nuance.
25:16And that's what I think, you know, when you have a different accent and a different culture, this is about nuance that you're bringing to something.
25:23And you're never going to get everything right when it's not native.
25:26And I know there's an expectation for, especially with film and television, it's different than stage, where you're transported and the viewer wants to feel like it's real.
25:34So there's an expectation for this reality.
25:37But, you know, the reality is I'm an actor.
25:40And so, but I'm still going to fucking give it my all.
25:43You know what I mean?
25:44And do my best.
25:45And I always ask, try to improve and take by take.
25:49And I like to have a dialect coach on set, because I like somebody to come in.
25:54And because I, you know, that's the Virgo part of my brain.
25:56I'm like, it needs to be perfect.
25:58But it wasn't perfect, you know.
26:00And I'm always there, like, well, you know, the director liked the take, but did my dialect coach think that that sounded good?
26:06And if it's not good, then we try to go in ADR.
26:09I love ADR.
26:09I used to hate ADR when I first started, because it was so hard.
26:12And then I realized it's so powerful.
26:15You can do so much in ADR.
26:17I mean, you can, you have the power to even change performance based on inflection of your voice.
26:23And so, you know, we go in when there's ADR.
26:26I'm always, like, very in with my, I go in with my dialect coach, and I'm like, listen, let's lock arms so that we can make sure that this is absolutely the best.
26:33Because for me, it's about someone from that culture or close to that culture watching and feeling like they've been honored.
26:40Because I'm Jamaican, and let me tell you how many times I've heard Jamaican accents that I've just been like, my God.
26:46But I've also always been just so excited when I see Jamaican culture represented, because you are, you just have this excitement and pride.
26:52And you know that someone might not get it 100% right, but when you see someone, like, giving it their all, you're just like, yes, big up.
26:59So that's all I want is for people to see it and see, like, that I've done the homework, I've done the work, you know.
27:05And it's not going to be perfect, I know that.
27:06But there's always going to be room to improve, and I get to do another season and maybe do a better job and take it to the next level, you know.
27:14Yeah, absolutely.
27:16That was so long.
27:18I feel like I've been talking for a long time.
27:20I've got to stop now.
27:21Now do it in Arabic.
27:26Shukran.
27:27Do you fall into an American accent easily?
27:34You know, it's like Jody was saying, it's just a lot of hours.
27:40You know, I was shooting Black Bag, and there I've got to do British.
27:43And so it was a lot of hours working on that.
27:45And then knowing that I, you know, there was only a week between finishing that and getting on this.
27:51So I had to prep both of them in tandem.
27:54So it's just, it's, I don't find it easy.
27:58I just find it's a matter of putting in the hours, you know.
28:02And then it's about, you know, whatever that is, four hours a day, five hours a day, for however many weeks it takes, however many weeks you've got.
28:10It's just recordings, listening to something back, repeating something, listening to it again, repeating.
28:15But it's not easy.
28:17I don't think it's easy if you're, you know.
28:18You guys, you shot Black Bag before the agency went into production.
28:23Yeah.
28:24That is incredible work by the editor, everyone on the agency that that, because that came out.
28:30Yeah, I mean, that's when you really see how a machine can work.
28:33Because I was like, okay, so when is it coming out?
28:35And they were like, November.
28:36And I was like, oh, November 25.
28:38And they were like, no, November 24.
28:40And I was like, what?
28:42I was like, is that a good idea?
28:43And, you know, so literally, we still shot a scene in episode one, end of October.
28:52And we went to the screening 15th of November.
28:55And then the show came out 28th of November.
28:58We wrapped the afternoon of the 15th.
29:01We wrapped on the 15th, went to the screening.
29:03Went to the screening.
29:05It was like opening night on Broadway.
29:07And, you know, it was, you know, I have to say, you know, that was partly my fault.
29:14Because they, you know, waited for me to finish Black Bag.
29:17This year, we're going to have, you know, we'll be starting earlier.
29:21But it was impressive to see, you know, there's great people behind this.
29:25You know, David Glasser at 101.
29:27And you've got, you know, Paramount with their commitment behind it.
29:30And then, you know, you've got Smokehouse, George and Grant.
29:36And, you know, that everybody was kind of, you know, again, on the same wavelength.
29:41The same notes were coming in.
29:43But, you know, it was like that constant thing of working at an episode.
29:48You know, cutting it down, working on it, working on it, you know, getting it ready.
29:51But it was impressive to see that.
29:53Because I didn't think it could be done.
29:55But I think David's kind of, you know, done it a few times.
30:00Incredible.
30:01Before we are out of time, you guys are going to go into production for season two quite soon, right?
30:09Has everyone...
30:10This month.
30:11Okay.
30:11Oh, fabulous.
30:12Has everyone read the scripts?
30:16What is that?
30:17Is there anything you can tease?
30:19Or is there a word that maybe describes, like a word or a sentence that kind of describes your reaction to what you read?
30:28Trying to think of ways to talk around.
30:30I think it's better.
30:34That's always good.
30:35We want to keep improving.
30:36No, I think what I'm like kind of joking.
30:39It's sort of, you know, that's the first season.
30:41What I love about it, that people sort of reaction to it and talking to, you know, people is that it's a bit of a slow burn.
30:48And we knew that, you know, you're establishing these characters.
30:51As an audience, you've got to lean into it a little bit.
30:54And then things start...
30:57You start...
30:58Things start to sort of reveal themselves about what's going on.
31:01Then this sort of pressure comes.
31:03Then, you know, the jeopardy of the situation gets ramped up.
31:07And, you know, it starts in the first episode in season two.
31:12And it picks up where we left off in episode 10 of this first season.
31:17And it doesn't let up.
31:18So it's full on.
31:20You know, the walls are closing in.
31:22Three months are going to have passed from when we left, you know, the Martian in the office.
31:28Yeah, we've been talking about it's either three or four.
31:30At the moment it stands at four.
31:31But, you know, but we might not go to three.
31:34My one word for season two is explosive.
31:38Would you agree, Michael Fassbender?
31:41If you say so, I agree.
31:44Yeah, no, I think it's...
31:46Explosive.
31:47It's intense.
31:49That's a good one.
31:50Trust me on that.
31:50Explosive.
31:52Pin that wide.
31:53Last chance for anyone else to offer up their thoughts on season two.
31:57But you don't have to.
31:58We've gotten plenty.
31:59What's your one word?
31:59Oh, my one word.
32:00Do I have a one word?
32:01What?
32:01Season two.
32:03I've only read the first three.
32:07I've been distracted by the world burning down around me.
32:11What could possibly be distracting you?
32:14I've got like seven more to read.
32:17You guys are fleeing right on the right time.
32:19Yeah.
32:19But as you said, I mean, it's not...
32:21You know, the wonderful thing about the show is that it is set against the backdrop of the world as it's happening.
32:26But in this instance, the world is changing so rapidly that it'd be, you know, difficult to write, you know, the season in the present moment.
32:36So, again, to Michael's point, it's not.
32:38It's three months after the end of this.
32:41Because, again, if it were in the present moment, we'd all be on the unemployment line.
32:46The warm, comforting hug of June 2023, I suppose.
32:50Yeah.
32:51Well, thank you all for joining us and for answering our questions about the show.
32:56Cast of the agency, everybody.
32:58Thank you so much.
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