When Michael Fassbender was first offered the lead role in The Agency, Paramount+ With Showtime’s cerebral spy thriller (an adaptation of the critically acclaimed French series Les Bureau des Legendes), he had a couple questions. Mainly, he needed help getting inside the head of his character, Martian, a CIA operative who has just returned from six years undercover. “I was like, who would want this job?” Fassbender said at a recent THR Frontrunners panel. “The question for me was, is this guy a sociopath or not?” The production put Fassbender in touch with one of the show’s CIA consultants, and together they realized that the character — who is also the father of a teenaged daughter — checked a lot of the boxes. “I was like, OK, this is who I’m dealing with now,” says Fassbender. “That’s not to say that he isn’t in some ways trying to find his soul and his humanity — he’s in search of that, and that made a lot of decisions easier for me.” Martian (his real name is Brandon Colby, though he mostly uses his CIA code name) finds his humanity through his relationship with Samia, a Sudanese professor whom he meets while undercover in Ethiopia. Jodie Turner-Smith, who plays Samia, says she signed onto the project for the opportunity to work with Fassbender, but also found unique challenges in the role — it requires her to speak Arabic. “I’ve often had the privilege to play different communities in the diaspora, and I have a lot of seriousness about that because it’s important to honor whatever culture I’ve been allowed to play,” she says. “I felt really confident that I could do it, but I’m also really grateful that I get another season because that means I can go deeper into it and do an even better job.” The Agency‘s main cast is rounded out by Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright, who play the London bureau’s station chief and deputy station chief, respectively. Gere looked to the history books to help inform his performance. “Being the boss, the daddy, in this one, I wanted to know what the impulse was to be one of the first guys in the business — these were Ivy League guys who wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia,” he says. “I didn’t want to play a political appointee; it had to be someone who had been in the trenches.” Wright, for his part, looked at his character within the context of current global events. “I think the CIA does, at times, go about solving problems that it’s caused,” he says. “That’s a larger story about American foreign policy, but I wanted to celebrate the civil servant who manages this institution we call the United States government and provides stability and security for us — a lot of the things we can take for granted.” The Frontrunners panel took place shortly before the cast returns to London to shoot the second season, and though they’re not allowed to reveal much they did tease a little bit about what to expect. “I think it’s better,” Fassbender says with a laugh. “What I loved about the first season is that it’s a bit of a slow burn, and you’ve got to lean into that as things start to reveal themselves. But season two picks up right where we left off in episode 10, and it just doesn’t let up — the walls are closing in and it’s full on.” Wright revealed that he’s only read the scripts for the first three episodes (“I’ve been distracted by the world burning down around me”) but says that he enjoys the way the plotline is set against the backdrop of global events as they’re happening in the timeline of the show — season two will pick up in early summer 2023. “If it were in the present moment, we’d all be on the unemployment line,” he says. “These are the guys who would be fired now, right?” This edition of THR Frontrunners is sponsored by Paramount+.